1 . You’ll make new friends in each stage of your life. Some of them will come and go, while others will last for the rest of your life.
If you are lacking in good friendships, it’s not too late. There are a lot of ways to make new friends that can stay with you for the rest of your life.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to let a friendship go, even if you’ve been friends for a long time. If one party isn’t making an effort to keep things going, it can lead to feelings of hurt and betrayal.
| A．Look for people who share things with you. |
| B．Friendship can help you get through mental and physical sufferings. |
| C．There are many benefits of having strong friendships. |
| D．It might be time to let things cool off and pursue other friendships. |
| E．Lifelong friendships are what most people desire. |
| F．This toxic friendship may bring you nothing but hurt. |
| G．You can get built-in opportunities to spend time with each other. |
2 . Generation Z is different. As a whole, Americans born between the late 1990s and early 2000s are less likely to have work or look for it: their labour-force-participation rate is 71%, compared with 75% for millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) and 78% for Generation X (born in the decade or so to 1980) when each came of age. As a result, they make up a smaller share of the workforce. With graduation ceremonies behind them, the latest group of diploma-holders are entering the job market. What they want from employers is also not quite the same as in generations past.
Although Gen-Z employees felt more lonely and isolated than their older colleagues at the start of the pandemic, the ability to work remotely has brought new possibilities. The benefits go beyond working in your pyjamas. Many are taking calls from beach chairs and hammocks (吊床) in more comfortable places or fleeing big cities in search for cheaper or larger homes.
This has big implications. Industries with jobs that cannot be done from home are falling out of favour with recent graduates. A study by ManpowerGroup, an employment company, suggests an inverse relationship (反比关系) between talent shortages and flexible working policies. The sectors which are either less able to offer remote work or have been slower to embrace it-including construction, finance and manufacturing-have faced some of the biggest skills gaps for all types of jobs.
That in turn has accelerated a pre-existing trend of young employees trading Wall Street for Silicon Valley. Now technology bosses are more willing than their opposite competitors in finance to let employees work from home (or anywhere else). Annual rankings of employer desirability by Universum, a graduate-staffing consultancy, bear this out. In 2008 the list of best employers graded by American graduates was dominated by big banks and the Big Four consulting firms. By 2021 seven of the ten highest spots were occupied by tech and media giants.
1. What does the underlined word “diploma-holders” in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Employees. | B．Students. | C．Graduates. | D．Shareholders. |
| A．They can’t afford to live in big cities. |
| B．They want to spend their days on the beach. |
| C．They want to work in a more flexible way. |
| D．They prefer wearing pyjamas while working |
| A．All walks of life are facing some of the biggest skills gaps. |
| B．Industries with jobs that cannot be done from home are less popular. |
| C．Industries with flexible working policies may suffer talent shortages. |
| D．Construction, finance and manufacturing can’t offer remote work. |
| A．To show that job-hopping among young employees is popular. |
| B．To indicate that young people prefer to work in big companies. |
| C．To weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of the two industries. |
| D．To prove that tech firms are more attractive due to its flexible working ways. |
3 . Leek Town Warriors was a girls’ football team which used to get routinely defeated every time they turned out, until James Henry stepped in two years ago. He tended to transform the team’s fortunes and then took the job when the previous coach quit. With the help of his assistant Andy Austin, they started training hard in April 2020.
Some players had never kicked a football before joining the team, so training them took hours of hard work and patience. After a good few weeks, they got down to training and really started to take it in what the coach wanted. “I insist on doing the basic stuff well and letting the girls decide what they feel they need to work on.” James said.
James’ first season was ruined by the pandemic, which forced him and Andy to get creative with training. They organized team-building activities with the girls to help them bond on and off the field. James then spent the sessions they could hold focusing on the basics of football like passing and shooting, bringing the girls up to a good standard.
James watched the girls develop over the course of last year, and in September they played their first match of the new season. They won the game, and since then went on an unbeaten run of eight games. The team’s star player, 15-year-old Chelsea, has also impressed the audience individually, becoming the top scorer in the league with incredible 30 goals.
James said, “All the effort that the girls, us coaches and parents have put in to get this point has been enormous. If I hadn’t had the support of Andy helping me every week, this would have been an impossible task. So I’m incredibly grateful to have him on side. All we want is to bring more girls into the game and show that it’s not all about having the best players; it’s about hard work and giving everyone the chance to play.”
1. Why did James Henry take over the soccer team?| A．Because he wanted to try his luck. |
| B．Because he wanted to turn things around. |
| C．Because the previous coach recommended him. |
| D．Because he hoped to fulfill his champion dream. |
| A．Lay stress on basic skills. | B．Develop players’ patience. |
| C．Pick experienced players. | D．Make decisions for the girls. |
| A．They became an unbeaten team in the new season. |
| B．They stood out in James’ first season. |
| C．They scored 30 goals in the new season. |
| D．They won regularly and secured progress. |
| A．Talent is the key. | B．Joint efforts matter. |
| C．Every dog has his day. | D．Time and tide wait for no man. |
4 . Weald & Downland Living Museum
Fun fact
Over 50 historic buildings from across the Weald and Downland area have been dismantled (拆除) and then reconstructed across a lovely 40-acre site in the south downs national park.
The collection of buildings represents almost a thousand years of rural life in south-east England: furnished just as they would have been in the past-complete with the homes, farms and public buildings. There’s a sense of exploring a real village as you wander between them along green paths, stopping to climb the stairs of a 17th-century craftsman’s (工匠) cottage to lie on the straw bed or sheltering from a shower in a smoky, 14th-century hall.
Getting there
The Stagecoach 60 bus service from Chichester to Midhurst stops just five minutes away at Grooms Yard, Singleton. The nearest railway stations are Chichester (2 miles) and Haslemere (7 miles). The museum is on Town Lane in Singleton, reached via the A286 from Chichester to Midhurst. Parking is free and there are disabled parking spaces opposite the museum shop.
Value for money?
Yes. It’s not cheap but it’s a special experience that easily fills a day. Plus it’s a valuable cause worth supporting. Adults £14, children 5—17 and students £6.50, under-4s free, family £38 (two adults and two children) or £25 (one adult and three children).
Opening hours
Daily 10 a.m.—5 p.m. (last entry 4 p.m.).
1. What can visitors do in Weald & Downland Living Museum?| A．Take a shower in the smoky hall. | B．Learn construction techniques. |
| C．Experience rural life centuries ago. | D．Stay overnight at craftsman s cottage. |
| A．£25. | B．£28. | C．£34.5. | D．£38. |
| A．It charges parking fees. |
| B．It allows visitors to enter until 5 p.m. |
| C．It is inconveniently located for bus riders. |
| D．It offers the disabled thoughtful service. |
5 . Some of the world’s most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying (联合) voice across cultures.
Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.
It’s Jason Moran’s job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.
“Jazz seems like it’s not really a part of the American appetite,” Moran tells National Public
Radio’s reporter Neal Conan “What I’m hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It’s actually colorful, and it’s actually digital.”
Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can’t be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,” says Moran.
Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller’s music for a dance party, “Just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,” says Moran. “For me, it’s the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion (情感) lie? Are we, as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “So I want to continue those dialogue. Those are the things I want to foster.”
1. What does the underlined word “that” in paragraph 3 refer to?| A．Jazz becoming more accessible. |
| B．The production of jazz growing faster. |
| C．Jazz being less popular with the young. |
| D．The jazz audience becoming larger. |
| A．It will disappear gradually. |
| B．It remains black and white. |
| C．It should keep up with the times. |
| D．It changes every 50 years. |
| A．Exploring the Future of Jazz |
| B．The Rise and Fall of Jazz |
| C．The Story of a Jazz Musician |
| D．Celebrating the Jazz Day |
6 . IT’S A TYPICAL morning: you wake up, take a shower, brush your teeth, and then prick (刺; 扎) your arm with a tiny needle. Wait, what? Unless you have a serious disease such as diabetes, you probably haven’t ever tested your own blood. But in the future, that might change.
The company Cor already sells a system for home blood testing. You stick your arm using a supposedly painless, one-off , blood-drawing cartridge (针筒) about the size of a lipstick. Then you stick the cartridge into a device that looks like the base for an electric toothbrush. A few minutes later, an app on your phone buzzes with updated information, including your current health data and tips on what to eat and how to exercise during the day.
It’s true that blood contains a wealth of information about a person’s health. Blood tests can show if a person is infected with a disease or at risk for a variety of problems, including a heart attack or a stroke. But most people don’t test their own blood until a doctor says it’s time. Healthy young adults get regular blood tests about every five years. These tests happen at a lab, where a technician or a nurse sticks a long needle into the arm to draw out several tubes full of blood. Cor and similar companies, such as WellnessFX, are trying to change all that. They think people deserve access to more information about their own health.
But not everyone is convinced that regular blood testing for healthy people is a great idea. Cor’s system is expensive and may not offer much benefit. “The lightest result here is that you lose your money and then you’re reminded to get more sleep and to eat more fruits, vegetables, and fish,” Pieter Cohen of Harvard Medical School told the New York Times. “The worst result is that you end up getting frightened by probably abnormal results that are actually completely normal for you.”
Plus, the results of a home blood test might be wrong. It’s hard to get accurate results from a tiny amount of blood. So what do you think? Is monitoring your own health via pinpricks the way of the future? Or is it better to leave blood testing to medical professionals?
1. Why does the author mention the typical morning in the first paragraph?| A．To explain a scene. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To make a comparison. | D．To provide an example. |
| A．It is painless and cheap to use. |
| B．It has won popularity among people. |
| C．It offers accurate health information about our body. |
| D．It may give advice on our diet according to the health data. |
| A．Objective. | B．Subjective. | C．Supportive. | D．Negative. |
| A．Home blood tests: yes or no? | B．Should blood tests be allowed at home? |
| C．A new system of improving your health. | D．Home blood testing: your health monitor! |
7 . What are two things that make humans different from animals? One is language and the other is music. It’s true that some animals can sing. However, the songs of animals like birds are very limited. It’s also true that humans, not animals, have developed musical instruments.
Music is a strange thing. It’s clearly distinct from language. However, people can use music to communicate things — especially their emotions. When music is combined (组合) with speech in a song, it’s a very powerful form of communication.
If music is truly different from speech, then we should process music and language in different parts of the brain. The scientific evidence suggests that this is true. For example, Vissarion Shebalin, a Russian composer, had a stroke (中风) in 1953. It injured the left side of his brain. He could no longer speak or understand speech. He could, however, still compose music until his death ten years later. On the other hand, sometimes strokes cause people to lose their musical ability, but they can still speak and understand speech.
By studying the physical effects of music on the body, scientists have also learnt a lot about how music influences the emotions. But why does music have such a strong effect on us? That is a harder question to answer.
Geoffrey Miller, a researcher at University College, London, thinks that music and love have a strong connection. Music requires special talent, practice and physical ability. That’s why it may be a way of showing your fitness to be someone’s mate. For example, playing a musical instrument requires fine muscular control. You also need a good memory to remember the notes. And playing those notes correctly suggests that your hearing is in excellent condition. Finally, when a man sings to the woman he loves, it may be a way of showing off.
However, Miller’s theory still doesn’t explain why certain combinations of sounds influence our emotions so deeply. For scientists, this is clearly an area that needs further research.
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?| A．Music is a common language. | B．Humans are advanced animals. |
| C．Music is closely related to humans. | D．Animals can use music to communicate. |
| A．Different. | B．Direct. | C．Free. | D．Far. |
| A．Music is another form of language. |
| B．Music can inspire people’s creativity. |
| C．Gifted people have more opportunities to succeed. |
| D．’The brain processes music and language separately. |
| A．It was advanced at that time. | B．It made a valuable contribution. |
| C．It sill needs to be improved. | D．It will be confirmed by younger scientists. |
8 . When someone is homeless or trying to recover from a natural disaster, they are in great need of everyday goods. While people are often encouraged to donate canned goods, not everyone is thinking about things like shoes.
Of course, you can’t go looking for a new job or a home, if you have no shoes to walk in. One woman in Hays, Kansas took this into consideration, and found a great way to help hundreds of people.
Payless stores were going out of business, and shoes were selling for as little as $1 per pair, so a woman named Addy Tritt bought out all the remaining shoes at the Hays Payless store — more than 200 pairs and donated them to flood victims in Nebraska.
Those shoes were then sent to farmers in Nebraska by Fort Hays State University (FHSU). Tritt, who recently graduated from FHSU, wanted to “pay it forward”.
“I have been so lucky,” she said. “There have been so many great people in my life who have inspired me. I see so many terrible things in the news. So many people have helped me when I was down. They influenced me so much that I want to help if I can.”
Tritt has a history of kind acts. She has donated more than 60 bags of school supplies to Hays students, and organised a baby clothes drive and two supply drives for the animal shelter.
“I really feel I have been directed and guided to help people,” she said. “If you can do something for someone else, you need to find a way even if it is a pair of shoes.”
1. How did Tritt help flood victims?| A．By buying shoes for them. | B．By sending some food to them. |
| C．By helping them find new jobs. | D．By selling shoes to raise money for them. |
| A．Get extra support. | B．Share news with others. |
| C．Pass on kindness. | D．Put forward a plan. |
| A．FHSU’s education. | B．Flood victims’ situations. |
| C．Other people’s kindness to her. | D．Payless stores’ going out of business. |
| A．Brave. | B．Easy-going. |
| C．Clever. | D．Caring. |
9 . At noon, the Tongxin Cafeteria near the Jing’an Temple downtown has a queue that exemplifies its multi-generational popularity. The menu, with over 60 dishes rotated daily, is liked by a series of tastes.
“Compared with food ordered for lunch online, this place is much better.” said Chen Luo, an accountant from a nearby office building. Chen, who lives alone, formerly depended heavily on delivered meals ordered online until her parents raised concerns about the nutritional value and what they called “bad food materials.”
Cooking for herself is too time-wasting, she said. “I used to spend two hours cooking and washing dishes, only to eat for 10 minutes,” Chen said. “The nearby community canteen (餐厅) is a perfect solution. These cafeterias, once known as ‘senior canteens’, were originally built to provide healthy meals at affordable prices to older folks who might not be getting enough nutrition at home. From 2019 to 2021, the Shanghai government set a goal of building 200 new community canteens, bringing the total at the end of last year to 1,608.
A basic meal with one meat dish and two vegetables costs less than 20 yuan (US$2.70), far cheaper than prices in mainstream downtown restaurants. And all meals are prepared on site with fresh materials. The government supports these cafeterias—sometimes with rent-free space; sometimes with reduced water and electricity charges.
Li Jiajun, the manager of a local community canteen, said the prices of the dishes are 20 percent lower than popular market rates because of the government assistance. His canteen provides elderly diners from 10:30—11:30 am and 4:30—5:30 pm. Apart from those hours, people of all ages are welcome.
Li said cafeteria managers are required to maintain detailed records, including 48-hour food samples and daily uploads to food safety platforms. This approach ensures the paths of all materials. Some community cafeterias have become so popular that they appear on WeChat and other lifestyle sharing platforms.
1. Why is the menu mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．To describe the menu. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To arouse readers’ curiosity. | D．To highlight the dishes. |
| A．Chen Luo’s parents were too busy to cook nutritional meals for her. |
| B．From 2019 to 2021, the Shanghai government built 1,608 new community canteens. |
| C．The community canteens needn’t pay for electricity with the government assistance. |
| D．The community canteens were once built to provide healthy meals for seniors. |
| A．nutrition value | B．fresh materials |
| C．government support | D．lower prices |
| A．Community canteens growing in popularity |
| B．Tongxin canteen liked by multi-generations |
| C．Community canteens shared on platforms |
| D．More community canteens built for seniors |
10 . This week in our national park’s journey, we explore a vast area with mountains, beaches, forests, and glaciers. Olympic National Park! It covers more than 400,000 hectares with several different ecosystems.
Elwha Valley
The Elwha Valley is in the central part of the park. It is the Olympic Peninsula’s largest watershed. A watershed is an area of land that separates waters that flow to different rivers or seas. Today, the Elwha River is the site of one of the largest ecosystem restoration projects in National Park Service history.
Hoh River Valley
The Hoh River is on the west side of the park. The river is formed from melted glacial ice on top of Mount Olympus. The river is 80 kilometers long. It empties into the Pacific Ocean. The area receives about 400 centimeters of rain each year. It is a temperate rainforest. Because of the amount of rain, many different types of plants grow in the Hoh rainforest, from mosses and ferns to huge Sitka spruce trees.
Hurricane Ridge
Hurricane Ridge is a mountain area in the northern part of the park. It is easy to enter, and provides incredible views of the Olympic Mountains. The ridge has many hiking paths. In winter, people come here to ski. They also come here to take part in other fun winter activities, like sledding and snowboarding. Hurricane Ridge usually has snow from December through the end of March. Visitors must be prepared for icy roads and severe weather.
The Coast
The westernmost part of the park is Pacific coastline. Olympic National Park has many breathtaking beaches. One of them is Rialto Beach, known for its tall seastacks while North of Rialto Beach is Hole-in-the-Wall. It is a natural arch that has been carved by the powerful sea.
1. What can you do on the west side of the park?| A．Swim in the river. | B．Learn about various plants. |
| C．Go hiking with your friends. | D．Walk on the beaches. |
| A．Elwha Valley. | B．Hoh River Valley. |
| C．Hirricane Ridge. | D．Rialto Beach. |
| A．They are all very cold. | B．They are all rich in ecosystems. |
| C．They can all be reached easily. | D．They are all part of Olympic National Park. |
