1 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct.
Hi, everyone.

Traditionally,     1     the year winds down, it’s a time for reflections—to give thanks, reconnect with loved ones, and cherish the more meaningful parts of life, removed from our usual day-to-day distractions.

Of course, the events of 2020 haven’t shown a lot of respect for our traditions. In a year of so much tragedy, it can be tough to give thanks when you’re doing your best to get by. And far too many of us will have to gather around a table with an empty chair, if we were able to gather together at all.

One thing, though, we can say about 2020 is that it forced us all to cherish what is most important, what’s most meaningful in our lives. To stop taking things for granted,     2     truly matters. To be grateful for what we have, and to be alive to the pain of those     3     (fortunate).

Throughout this challenging year, I’ve been moved, again and again, by the sacrifices so many were willing to make on behalf of others. The healthcare professionals who risked their lives to save ours. The workers who have kept our lights on and our shelves stocked, always essential to our economy, but finally     4     (recognize) for it. The protesters of every race and age who saw injustice in their streets and their institutions and demanded change. And the less heralded leaders, the quiet change-makers who saw need in their own communities and leapt to address it. They checked in on their neighbors, delivered food and PPE to seniors and those experiencing hardship, offered mental health support to those     5    (recover) from trauma.     6     holes this pandemic tore wide in our social fabric, these emerging leaders stepped forward to patch it up.

These are exactly the leaders Michelle and I started our Foundation to support. We always thought they     7     (lead) us into a bright future, if only we     8     empower them, connect them with each other, and give them a dose of inspiration when they needed it.

What we learned in 2020 is that these emerging leaders aren’t just building a brighter future, they’re safeguarding our present. In hard times, they are the ones who’ve given me solace. It’s     9     sacrifice in which I found hope. And as we begin to close the chapter on a difficult year with encouraging news on the horizon, it’s their leadership     10     will guide us today and tomorrow.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everybody.

—Quoted from Barack Obama’s Christmas speech in 2020

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Ancient Whale Skeleton Holds Clues to Climate Change

A whale skeleton thought to be up to 5000 years old has been discovered, almost perfectly preserved, by researchers in Thailand.

The skeleton, believed     1     (be) a Bryde’s whale, was found in Samut Sakhon, west of Bangkok. Researchers have excavated (挖掘) 80% of the remains and so far have identified nine complete vertebrae (椎骨), five ribs, shoulder blade and fins. The skeleton     2     (measure) 12 metres, with a skull that is 3 metres long.

The bones will be carbon dated to identify their age, but it is thought that they are     3     3000 and 5000 years old.

Bryde’s whales are still found in Thailand’s waters,     4     they are considered a protected species. The whales—which prefer waters above 16℃ and feed on schooling fish such as anchovies—face threats from fishing equipment     5     tourism.

The remains, which were found about 12 kilometres inland, will help scientists understand the evolution of the species, and track     6     sea levels have changed over thousands of years.

Marcus Chua, of the National University of Singapore, said the discovery adds to evidence of “relatively large sea level changes around 6000 years to 3000 years ago in the Gulf of Thailand, where the shoreline was up to tens of kilometres inland in comparison to the present coast.”

Previously, only marine deposits     7     (contain) small fossilised marine shells or crabs had been found inland, and it was not clear     8     those fossils had been moved by humans, said Chua. “A large subfossil whale dated thousands of years ago near Bangkok would provide strong evidence of where the sea was during that time.” he said.

Such evidence is highly relevant, given that the climate crisis is contributing to rising sea levels. “This     9     certainly bring attention to the issue, and show how and where low-lying areas was flooded,” said Chua.

The discovery will also help deepen researchers’ understanding of the Bryde’s whale, and other marine life. Alongside the skeleton, researchers found preserved items including shark teeth and shells. “Scientists could also study the deposits     10     (find) at the same level as the whale to reconstruct the biological communities present during that time, and compare them to present day systems,” said Chua.

3 . Directions: Read the following two passages. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper from of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

The Industrial Monopoly and Its Decline

Upon the completion of the Industrial Revolution by 1850 England became the workshop of the world. The population went on increasing rapidly, if not as rapidly as before, reaching 41 million by 1900. Big towns grow bigger. Production and export of both textiles and heavy industries reached new high levels.

After the abolition of the corn law, other forms of protection     1    (drop) one after another. For instance, the Navigation Acts and protective tariffs on hundreds of articles. By 1860 great Britain was well on the road to free trade. Certainly, this was aggressive in character. While Britain opened her own ports to Free Trade, she demanded open ports in other countries     2     economic pressure and naval strength, thus     3    (extend) foreign markets and increasing demands for British goods.

It was in the boom that collapsed in 1873 when there was great anxious concern about both markets and materials     4     Mid-Victorian prosperity reached its peak. The fact that there was a retardation in the national rate of growth to below two percent per year was even harder to bear with the growth rates of competitors such as America and Germany rising.

Arable and meat producing farmers felt the full weight of foreign competition between 1870 and 1900. In industry,     5     there were new forms of power and a trend toward bigger plants, and     6    (impersonal) organization, there was a similar situation. Britain was never as strong or as innovatory in the age of steel     7     in the early age of iron. By 1896 British steel output was less than     8     of either the United States or Germany and the textile industry was declining absolutely. With its former easy advantage in world markets     9    (lose), both opinion and government policy lost faith in the merits of free trade. During years of economic challenge at home, capital exports greatly increased, until they reached a figure of almost £200000000 every year before 1914, and investment income poured in to improve adverse balance(贸易逆差)on trade accounts. During the last 20 years of peace before 1914 when Britain’s role as rentier was at its height, international prices rose again, continuing to rise     10     after the end of World War I.

4 . 语法填空

Three Hours a Week: Play Time’s over for China’s Young Video Gamers

China has forbidden under-18s from playing video games for more than three hours a week, a stringent(严苛的)social intervention that it said was needed to pull the plug on a growing addiction to     1     it once described as “spiritual opium(鸦片)”.

The new rules,     2     (publish) on Monday, are part of a major shift by Beijing to strengthen control over its society and key sectors of its economy, including tech, education and property, after years of runaway growth.

The restrictions, which apply to any devices including phones, are a body blow to a global gaming industry that caters to tens of millions of young players in the world’s most profitable market.

They limit under - 18s to     3     (play) for one hour a day - 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. - on only Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, according to the Xinhua sate news agency. They can also play for an hour, at the same time, on public holidays.

The rules from the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) regulator coincide with a broader clampdown(压制)by Beijing     4     China’s tech giants, such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

The campaign     5     (prevent) what state media has described as the “savage growth” of some companies has wiped tens of billions of dollars off shares traded at home and abroad.

Gaming companies will be barred from providing services to minors in any form outside the stipulated(规定)hours and     6     ensure they have put real-name verification systems in place, said the regulator,     7     oversees the country’s video games market.

The new rules swiftly became one of the most discussed topics on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. Some users expressed support for the measures     8     others said they were surprised at how drastic(严厉的)the rules were.

“This is so fierce that I’m utterly speechless,” said one comment that received over 700 likes.     9     expressed doubt that the restrictions could be enforced. “They will just use their parent’s logins, how can they control it?” asked one.

The NPPA regulator told Xinhua it     10     (increase) the frequency and intensity of inspections for online gaming companies to ensure they were putting in place time limits and anti-addiction systems. It also said that parents and teachers played key roles in curbing gaming addiction.

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The young applicant is described as confident and courageous. His resume, at 15 pages, is glittering, complete with performance reviews (“full of energy”), a map of his travels (trips to Tokyo and Bali) and a list of books he     1     (read) this year (408 in total). It includes discussion of his adversity quotient and his artistic talents. But the applicant is not a seasonal job seeker. He is a five-year-old boy from southern China     2     (apply) for a spot in first grade at a Shanghai private school.

The resume,     3     was leaked and shared widely online this week, has provoked a mix of fascination, indignation and debate about     4     children in China’s test-crazed education system are being raised as soulless strivers.

Some called for the parents of the boy     5     (arrest). Others wondered whether today’s children would know true happiness,     6     the intense pressure to perform well and land good jobs. Still, some defend the parents,     7     (say) they were trying to promote their child’s best interests in a flawed system.

Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Kansas, said the debate reflected widespread anxiety     8     Chinese parents about getting their children into top schools. In China’s test-dominated system, exam scores determine where students go to college and what careers they     9     pursue.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy head of the 21 century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said China needed to distribute education resources     10     (evenly) and to begin evaluating students on more than just est scores.

“There is a competition to rank every student,” he said, “Under these circumstances, of course parents want their kids to rank in the top. Then it worsens this kind of anxious competition.”

6 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language.     1    range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation of a foreign language in a foreign country to a casual study of one’s own mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home. To do this, someone has to act as a source of language data-an informant. Informants are ideally native speakers of a language,    2    provide words and sentences for analysis and other kinds of information about the language.

Many factors must be considered when selecting informants—    3    one is working with a single speaker or more people interacting. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the type of the language used. The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting are also highly relevant,    4    are the personal qualities of the informants.

Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language    5    (check), and provides a way of making those claims more accurate as difficult pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly. But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they    6    (record), and sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimize the ‘observer’s paradox’, a situation in which people feel strange to each other. Some recordings are made    7    the speakers being aware of the fact—a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be expected. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording,    8    keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style, like asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality.

An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often ambiguous or unclear. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer’s    9    (write)comments on the non-verbal behavior of the participants, and about the context in general. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of    10    is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations as the camera cannot be everywhere, and transcription always benefits from any additional commentary provided by an observer.

7 . After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

I’ve always enjoyed walking but never in a million years     1     I imagine I would end up walking over 200 kilometers in 10 days, become a fan of walking holidays, and end up developing self-guided hiking routes in Portugal with a local tour operator as part of my business. The shift from being someone who was content with an easy three-hour walk to an     2     (experience) multi-day hiker began with a brief taste of the Portuguese Camino de Shantiago, and ancient pilgrim trail (朝圣者道路) through Portugal to Snatiago de Compostela Cathedral in Spain.

Back in 2013 I did a guided one-day hike along one of the most beautiful and     3     (challenge) stretches of the Camino, north of Ponte de Lima, so it was hard work, but the views from the top of Labruja Mountain made the climb worthwhile. My guides were so enthusiastic about the thrill of arriving at Sangtiago de Compostela Cathedral after the challenges of day after day on the Camino     4     I began to think I might want to give it a go,     5     not being religious.

Fast forward a few years and I set off from Barcelos with a friend of mine     6     (follow) the Portuguese Camino de Santiago. Apart from suffering from back pain, I thought I was quite fit but nothing had prepared me for     7     exhausted I would feel at the end of each walking day.

This was truly a slow travel experience, as we were averaging about 20 kilometers per day. I     8     (expect) plenty of sightseeing but that ended up being minimal. Quickly, I realized the moral of this unique travel experience: The Camino was all about making the most of the journey rather than the destination.

I will never forget the sense of achievement and progress tit the end of each walking day, and the relief and pride I felt when we finally made     9     to Santiago de Compostela.

We met people     10    , from all walks of life, managed to walk the Camino several times and I can totally understand how it can become addictive.

8 . Directions:After reading the passages below.fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent andgrammatically correct.For the blanks with given words,fill in each blank with the proper form of the word given:for the other blanks,use one word for each blank the best fits the context.

One of the most important New Year's resolutions     1     every parent should make for 2021 is to ensure everyone in the family spends less time with screens. Since last year, a number of new studies     2     (confirm) that the effects of technology on kids are even worse than many parents feared.

Children between the ages of 8 and 11 who spend more than two hours a day looking at screens were associated with lower cognitive function than those who engaged in less screen time, according to researchers who published a study in The Lancet in September. While researchers noted there is no causal link, they wrote,“Emerging evidence suggests that mobile device and social media uses have an unfavorable relationship with attention, memory, impulse control, and academic performance”--- perhaps     3     technology encourages multi-tasking and can cut into kids' sleep time.

The Times also reported many elite schools are moving towards eliminating or reducing screens, while many public schools are touting technology in classrooms.     4     fears of a technological divide were once centered on the high cost of technology and high-speed internet access, the concern is now that less affluent children     5     be spending more time with technology. Already, research by Common Sense Media has found that higher-income teenagers spend less time with screens for entertainment compared to lower-income teens. Of course, a total ban isn't necessarily a smart strategy, either. Some screen time can be important for helping kids learn to use technology they     6     (need) in their careers. They might also use it in beneficial ways     7     (access) educational games and programs, and stay connected to family and friends, for example.

And     8     parents blame their kids' bad behavior on their technology use, it's also important to take a look in the mirror. Moms and dads need to reduce their own screen time, too. A study published in June in Pediatric Research found that there's     9     vicious cycle: The parents' use of phones and its interference in parent-child interactions is associated with kids acting out(模仿).This might then prompt parents to continue using their phones as a way to cope with stress.

New Year's celebrations are the perfect time to get the whole family to look up from their screens       10     offering some fun alternatives like board games, scavenger hunts, baking treats or getting together with family and friends. Kids will soon discover that there are plenty of things that aren't on Facebook to "like."

9 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

We had several monkeys on board, but Jack was the prince of them all. As he grew tame, he got more liberty, till he got the whole range of the ship, except the captain’s and the passengers’ cabins. I     1    (awaken) at an early hour by the quick steps of feet. It was Jack chasing around. He would seize the hats     2     the sailors’ heads, and threw it to the sea. He would steal their knives and other tools, which,     3     not very actively pursued, he would sometimes throw overboard. When breakfast was preparing, Jack used to sit in a corner, and when the cook’s back was turned, take something from the fire.

He sometimes burned his fingers by these tricks, and this kept him quiet for a few days. But no sooner had the pain been gone, to no one’s surprise,    4     the same thing was done again. Two days in each week, the pigs, which formed part of our livestock,     5     (allow) to run about for exercise; and then Jack was as happy as the day was long.    6     (hide) himself behind a bucket, he would suddenly spring upon the back of one of them, which then ran around in a fright.

Besides Jack, we had on board three little monkeys with red skins and blue faces. Once, Jack attracted     7     (small) one to him. Then, seizing him with one hand, with the other he took the brush and covered him with white paint from head to foot! As soon as Jack saw that he was discovered, he dropped his wet-through brother, and ran up to the main-top,     8     he stood looking at what was going on below with his nose between the bars.

Jack was afraid to come down, and only after three days passed     9     hunger force him to come down. He chose the moment when I was sitting on deck, he dropped suddenly into my feet, looking so piteously (可怜地) at me for pardon, that I not only forgive him     10    , but saved him from further punishment. Soon after this, I took another ship, and Jack and I parted, never to meet again.

10 . Directions: After reading the passage below. fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Helping Children Learn Better Through Lego

Wei Wei Gluckman didn’t get to play with Lego during her childhood years in China. However,     1     (follow) a chance to encounter with the brand more than a decade ago, Gluckman is now not just an enthusiast—she’s one of the only two Lego Certified Professionals on the Chinese mainland.

    2     (train)as an architect in a US university and currently working as a curator(管理者) of architecture-related cultural events, Gluckman said she learned about Lego first in 2006.

She recalled that a US magazine     3     (approach) her with the idea of organizing exhibitions that would feature Lego installation. “I was fascinated.     4     you start playing, you begin to understand the power of the blocks. They require concentration, craftwork and logical thinking.” said Gluckman. “Playing with Lego also helps people to understand how and hwy they think the way they do.” she said.

Her fascination with Lego led her to start the “Brick by Brick” series in 2006. The event encourages both children and adults to use Lego bricks to express     5     they think of their home city.

Throughout the past decade, Gluckman has toured many Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong     6     (hold) “Brick by Brick” events, which are always free and open to the public. Each event features a unique theme     7     aims to get children to think critically about societal matters.

“I prefer collective pieces of work as they are     8     (powerful).” said Gluckman. “I’m more like an activist. I promote learning through play     9     organizing such public events and the play experience that I design is aimed at empowering the participants in the end.”

“Open play is key. There is no right or wrong, no rules, and no winning or losing. The key point here is that children can decide for     10    . Creativity happens when they are allowed to develop their own rules and approach to building.