1 . Bertie knew there was something in the wind. His mother had been sad in recent days, not sick, just strangely sad. The lion had just lain down beside him, his head warm on Bertie’s feet, when Father cleared his throat and began, “You’ll soon be eight, Bertie. A boy needs a proper education. We’ve found the right place for you, a school near Salisbury in England.”
His heart filled with a terrible fear, all Bertie could think of was his white lion. “But the lion,” he cried, “What about the lion?”
“I’m afraid there’s something else I have to tell you,” his father said. Looking across at Bertie’s mother, he took a deep breath. Then he told Bertie he had met a circus owner from France, who was over in Africa looking for lions to buy. He would come to their farm in a few days.
“No! You can’t send him to a circus!” said Bertie. “He’ll be shut up behind bars. I promised him he never would be. And they will come to see him and laugh at him. He’d rather die. Any animal would!” But as he looked across the table at them, he knew their minds were quite made up.
Bertie felt completely betrayed. He waited until he heard his father’s deep breathing next door. With his white lion at his heels, he crept downstairs in his pyjamas, took down his father’s rifle from the rack and stepped out into the night. He ran and ran till his legs could run no more. As the sun came up over the grassland, he climbed to the top of a hill and sat down, his arms round the lion’s neck. The time had come. “Be wild now,” he whispered. “You’ve got to be wild. Don’t ever come home. All my life I’ll think of you, I promise I will.” He buried his head in the lion’s neck. Then, Bertie clambered down off the hill and walked away.
When he looked back, the lion was still sitting there watching him; but then he stood up, yawned, stretched, and sprang down after him. Bertie shouted at him, but he kept coming. He threw sticks. He threw stones. Nothing worked.
There was only one thing left to do. Tears filling his eyes and his mouth, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired over the lion’s head.
1. Bertie’s mother was sad probably because she________.| A．had lied about her good health condition | B．had decided to send Bertie to a new school |
| C．knew selling the lion would upset Bertie | D．knew Bertie would hate to go to England |
| A．some audience | B．other animals | C．Bertie’s friends | D．circus’s owners |
| A．kill the lion out of helplessness | B．protect himself from being chased |
| C．threaten the lion back to the wild | D．show his anger towards his father |
| A．circuses are the last places for animals to live |
| B．animals belonging to the wild should be set free |
| C．parents are sometimes cruel to their children |
| D．people and animals can be faithful to each other |
2 . Almost everybody in America will spend a part of his or her life behind a shopping cart(购物手推车). They will, in a lifetime, push the chrome-plated contraptions many miles. But few will know—or even think to ask—who it was that invented them.
Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1937. At that time he was in the supermarket business. Every day he would see shoppers lugging(吃力地携带) groceries around in baskets they had to carry.
One day Goldman suddenly had the idea of putting baskets on wheels. The wheeled baskets would make shopping much easier for his customers, and would help to attract more business.
On June 4, 1937, Goldman’s first carts were ready for use in his market. He was terribly excited on the morning of that day as customers began arriving. He couldn’t wait to see them using his invention.
But Goldman was disappointed. Most shoppers gave the carts a long look, but hardly anybody would give them a try.
After a while, Goldman decided to ask customers why they weren’t using his carts. “Don’t you think this arm is strong enough to carry a shopping basket?” one shopper replied.
But Goldman wasn’t beaten yet. He knew his carts would be a great success if only he could persuade people to give them a try. To this end, Goldman hired a group of people to push carts around his market and pretend they were shopping! Seeing this, the real customers gradually began copying the phony(假冒的) customers.
As Goldman had hoped, the carts were soon attracting larger and larger numbers of customers to his market. But not only did more people come—those who came bought more. With larger, easier-to-handle baskets, customers unconsciously bought a greater number of items than before.
Today’s shopping carts are five times larger than Goldman’s original model. Perhaps that’s one reason Americans today spend more than five times as much money on food each year as they did before 1937—before the coming of the shopping cart.
1. Why was Goldman disappointed at first?2. Why did Goldman hire people to push carts around his market?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
The purpose of Goldman’s invention was to make shopping easier and show off his imagination.
4. What do you think of Goldman? Please briefly explain. (about 40 words)
3 . In June 2014, Huffington Post and Mail Online reported that three-year-old Victoria Wilcher, who had suffered facial scarring, had been kicked out of a KFC because she was frightening customers. Later, KFC announced that no evidence had been found to support the story. This phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that care more about traffic figures.
Brooke Binkowski, an editor, says that, during her career, she has seen a shift towards less editorial oversight in newsrooms. “Clickbait is king, so newsrooms will uncritically print something unreal. Not all newsrooms are like this, but a lot of them are.”
Asked what the driving factor was, a journalist said, “You’ve an editor breathing down your neck and you have to meet your targets. And there are some young journalists on the market who are inexperienced and who will not do those checks. So much news that is reported online happens online. There is no need to get out and knock on someone’s door. You just sit at your desk and do it.”
Another journalist says, “There is definitely pressure to churn out (粗制滥造) stories in order to get clicks, because they equal money. At my former employer in particular, the pressure was on due to the limited resources. That made the environment quite horrible to work in.”
In a February 2015 report for Digital Journalism, Craig Silverman wrote, “Today the bar for what is worth giving attention to seems to be much lower. Within minutes or hours, a badly sourced report can be changed into a story that is repeated by dozens of news websites, resulting in tens of thousands of shares. Once a certain critical mass is reached, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. The rumor(传闻) becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity.”
And, despite the direction that some newsrooms seem to be heading in, a critical eye is becoming more, not less important, according to the New York Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan. “Reporters and editors have to be more careful than ever before. It’s extremely important to question and to use every verification(验证) method available before publication.” Yet those working in newsrooms talk of doubtful stories being tolerated because, in the words of some senior editors, “a click is a click, regardless of the advantage of a story”. And, “if the story does turn out to be false, it’s simply a chance for another bite at the cherry.”
Verification and fact-checking are regularly falling victim to the pressure to bring in the numbers, and if the only result of being caught out is another chance to bring in the clicks, that looks unlikely to change.
1. According to Brooke Binkowski, newsrooms produce false news because _____.| A．resources are limited | B．clicks matter a lot |
| C．budgets are inadequate | D．journalists lack experience |
| A．Supportive. | B．Negative. | C．Sceptical. | D．Neutral. |
| A．Consequences of false stories. | B．A craze to get clicks. |
| C．Incompetence of journalists. | D．Causes of online false news. |
4 . In Thanks for What We Have
I sat nervously and waited for Kathleen to speak. Being called to the human resources department is a little like being called to the principal’s office. “Annie,” she said, “A food bank in our town that serves the elderly is asking for
I walked back to my office without any idea as to where to
That evening I drove home filled with negativity. Then I remembered a time long ago when my father was out of work. Mom wrote a note to Jim, the milkman, asking him not to deliver any more milk. Two days later Jim picked up the
The memory of Jim’s
The next morning I posted signs about our food drive all over the cafeteria and on every notice board I could find. Each sign read, “Food drive to support the elderly poor of our town! Donations of non-perishable(不易腐的) foods are greatly needed.”
Within a few days I had to locate empty office space to
As we were making our rounds one day, I asked her where she got all the energy and enthusiasm. “Annie,” she said, “with the unemployment rate touching 10 percent, I can’t think of a better way to be
As I listened to Maggie, the milkman’s words
| A．advice | B．pity | C．help | D．medicine |
| A．sit | B．stay | C．work | D．begin |
| A．drive | B．struggle | C．refuse | D．attempt |
| A．keys | B．kids | C．empties | D．cents |
| A．from | B．to | C．for | D．with |
| A．happiness | B．kindness | C．patience | D．politeness |
| A．check | B．clear | C．store | D．separate |
| A．satisfaction | B．energy | C．quality | D．motivation |
| A．lucky | B．proud | C．delighted | D．grateful |
| A．hid | B．fell | C．rang | D．disappeared |
Teenagers are learning new communication skills every day. It is important for them to have opportunities to network, or to meet and get to know new people. Online networking, which is very popular with teens today, makes short, superficial connections. But offline networking better encourages meaningful connections that will increase hope, develop skills, and open avenues to career opportunity. Teens need to practice more offline networking. It will prepare them to be confident face-to-face communicators in the real world.
A survey of almost 7,000 teens was conducted in 2019 by three Swiss researchers, and they found that teens were spending too much time on social networking sites. So, they suggested that teens should spend more time with others in real life. It not only contributes to a stronger sense of identity and a happier mood, but also gives us the chance to share happiness with other people. In other words, offline networking seems to actually benefit a teen’s emotional health.
Face-to-face communication also gives teens an opportunity to learn to read people. Everyone communicates in person differently than communicating over the phone, through texting, or in online posts. Being face-to-face requires a person to think and respond more quickly—without the safety net of a delete key.
And much of our communication is nonverbal anyway. Facial expressions, gestures, and vocal tones are just a few examples. Teens need to have face-to-face interactions so they can learn to read these nonverbal cues (暗示), which are sometimes even more important than the words a person is saying. A time will come when the teen will need to enter the job market, and this usually means a face-to-face interaction, including interacting naturally with customers, hearing and understanding their words as well as their nonverbal cues in many different kinds of businesses.
Offline networking is important because it can improve a teenager’s well-being and help prepare him for the future. That’s why every teen should spend time practicing real-world interactions.
1. What is the disadvantage of online networking?2. What was the researchers’ suggestion to teens?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Hearing and understanding what a person is saying is necessarily involved in communication, so people get less from nonverbal expressions.
4. In addition to the benefits mentioned in the passage, what do you think are some other benefits of face-to-face communication? (about 40 words)
6 . Hundreds of scientists, writers and academics sounded a warning to humanity in an open letter published last December: Policymakers and the rest of us must engage openly with the risk of global collapse. Researchers in many areas have projected the widespread collapse as “a credible scenario(情景) this century”.
A survey of scientists found that extreme weather events, food insecurity, and freshwater shortages might create global collapse. Of course, if you are a non-human species, collapse is well underway.
The call for public engagement with the unthinkable is especially germane in this moment of still-uncontrolled pandemic and economic crises in the world's most technologically advanced nations. Not very long ago, it was also unthinkable that a virus would shut down nations and that safety nets would be proven so disastrously lacking in flexibility.
The international scholars’ warning letter doesn't say exactly what collapse will look like or when it might happen. Collapseology, the study of collapse, is more concerned with identifying trends and with them the dangers of everyday civilization. Among the signatories(签署者) of the warning was Bob Johnson, the originator of the “ecological footprint” concept, which measures the total amount of environmental input needed to maintain a given lifestyle. With the current footprint of humanity, “it seems that global collapse is certain to happen in some form, possibly within a decade, certainly within this century,” Johnson said in an email.
“Only if we discuss the consequences of our biophysical limits,” the December warning letter says, “can we have the hope to reduce their speed, severity and harm”. And yet messengers of the coming disturbance are likely to be ignored. We all want to hope things will turn out fine. As a poet wrote,
Man is a victim of dope(麻醉品)
In the incurable form of hope.
The hundreds of scholars who signed the letter are intent(执着) on quieting hope that ignores preparedness. “Let's look directly into the issue of collapse,” they say, “and deal with the terrible possibilities of what we see there to make the best of a troubling future.”
1. What does the underlined word “germane” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?| A．Scientific. | B．Credible. |
| C．Original. | D．Relevant. |
| A．worried | B．puzzled |
| C．surprised | D．scared |
| A．The signatories may change the biophysical limits. |
| B．The author agrees with the message of the poem. |
| C．The issue of collapse is being prioritized. |
| D．The global collapse is well underway. |
7 . “I Got Him!”
It was the homecoming parade in Rockwall, Texas, and cheerleader Tyra Winters in her uniform, was riding atop one of the school’s floats(花车). As it slowly made its way down the street, the 17-year-old enthusiastically
All of a sudden, a horrible
“There was no coughing；there was no
Except for Winters. With dreams of becoming a surgeon, she had learned the Heimlich maneuver（海姆利克氏急救法）. Knowing that every second
By the time she got to the boy, his face had turned purple. “I got him!” she yelled to Nicole as she
Soon, the boy coughed up the piece of
It all happened so
| A．laughed | B．waved | C．shouted | D．stared |
| A．noise | B．ring | C．whistle | D．scream |
| A．begging | B．applying | C．waiting | D．preparing |
| A．ran | B．slid | C．fell | D．jumped |
| A．gasping | B．crying | C．breathing | D．speaking |
| A．faded | B．continued | C．approached | D．counted |
| A．grabbed | B．moved | C．drew | D．separated |
| A．nut | B．blood | C．candy | D．biscuit |
| A．quickly | B．quietly | C．gradually | D．obviously |
| A．hopeless | B．speechless | C．helpless | D．emotionless |
8 . If you suddenly find yourself working from home or another remote location, you're going to miss those interactions with other people. Video conferencing can help by allowing you to talk face-to-face, even if it is via a screen. Jitsi is one of those free video conferencing apps you can use to connect.
Jitsi is a set of open-source projects that allows you to easily build and deploy secure videoconferencing solutions. At the heart of Jitsi are Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the internet, while other projects in the community enable other features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting.
Jitsi started life as a way to talk to people over the internet using audio and video. Over the course of a decade, though, it's become so much more. Today, Jisi is:
A vibrant developer community.
First and foremost, Jitsi is a community of developers that are pushing the envelope of video conferencing quality on the web.
The foundation of some really amazing products.
The community members have developed countless projects and products that started with Jitsi code.
A crazy good, completely free video conferencing solution that anyone can use.
Jitsi is a favorite videoconferencing solution for anyone with privacy concerns, journalists, for example. There's a reason so many people use Jitsi Meet as a Skype alternative for video conferencing.
Unlike other videoconferencing technologies, Jitsi Videobridge, the heart of Jitsi, passes everyone’s video and audio to all participants, rather than mixing them first. Currently, Jitsi supports a maximum of up to 75 participants per call, although performance may suffer with more than 35. The project is working on “going beyond 100” participants at once. The service supports phone in audio participants in both the hosted and self-hosted versions. The service supports screen sharing and has mobile apps for iPhone and Android.
Now Jitsi has surpassed 10 million monthly average users. There are no extra payments to Jitsi, and the project remains free thanks to 8x8 (a company), which uses the technology in its own products.
1. The central services of Jitsi lie in ________.| A．a set of open-source projects | B．world's best video conferences |
| C．free features like audio and dial-in | D．Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet |
| A．Jitsi helps with the privacy problem in videoconferencing |
| B．Jitsi mixes everyone's video and audio to all participants |
| C．Jitsi supports screen sharing in the hosted version |
| D．Jitsi works on 100 participants at most right now |
| A．it has surpassed 10 million monthly average users |
| B．8x8 uses the technology in its own products |
| C．only paid apps can ensure users' privacy |
| D．users have limited access to Jitsi |
Pixar is one of the world's most famous and successful film
The robotic lunar mission ended
