3 . Are fields full of solar panels (太阳能电池板) a bad thing for England’s green and pleasant land? Some figures at the top of the UK government certainly think so.

“I think one of the most ___________ sights when you’re driving through England is seeing fields that should be full of crops or livestock full of solar panels,” said Liz Truss, then UK prime minister, in August. “___________ lands … should be used for food production.”

This is an issue in many other countries too. China, ___________, is reportedly considering a ban (禁令) on ___________ on farmland and in forests. In England, existing rules already ___________ solar farms on the most productive agricultural land. Nevertheless, the UK government was reportedly planning to effectively ban them on most English farmland.

With Rishi Sunak, who has previously criticized solar farms on farmland, now having replaced Truss, it is unclear whether the UK government will ___________ the ban nationwide as planned, but ___________ of solar on farmland must know three things.

First, a lot of food is being turned into biofuels — even though food-based biofuels increase greenhouse emissions, harm biodiversity and ___________ food prices.

Second, plants aren’t great at  ___________ solar energy. Crops typically turn less than 1 per cent of the solar energy that hits them into useable biofuel, whereas solar panels ____________ about 20 per cent of light energy into electricity.

Third, farming is very polluting, ____________ a third of global greenhouse gas emissions as well as many other pollutants. In the UK in 2020, 121,000 hectares were used to grow crops for producing heat, electricity or biofuels ____________ food. That is five times as much as the 23,000 hectares covered by ground-mounted solar.

To see which is a better use of land, let’s ____________ what we get from solar panels and biofuels. Per year, a hectare of wheat can produce enough bioethanol (生物乙醚) for a car to drive around 23,000 kilometres, Simon Evans at the climate site Carbon Brief has calculated. A hectare of solar, by contrast, can produce enough electricity in a ____________ for an electric car to drive 2,570,000 kilometres. So a hectare of solar gets you 50 to 110 times further — and with much less pollution along the way. This is why it makes no sense ____________ or environmentally to ban solar on farms, while continuing to allow farms to grow foods and turn them into biofuels.

1.

A．unlikely

B．rare

C．impressive

D．depressing

2.

A．Agricultural

B．Empty

C．Unused

D．Native

3.

A．as a result

B．on the contrary

C．on the other hand

D．for instance

4.

A．crops

B．solar

C．livestock

D．pollutants

5.

A．expand

B．exert

C．exclude

D．exploit

6.

A．enforce

B．intend

C．survive

D．suffer

7.

A．advocates

B．opponents

C．neutralists

D．politicians

8.

A．drive down

B．push up

C．bid up

D．hold on

9.

A．producing

B．consuming

C．capturing

D．supplying

10.

A．put

B．throw

C．pressure

D．convert

11.

A．competing for

B．responsible for

C．allowing for

D．calling for

12.

A．rather than

B．in spite of

C．due to

D．out of

13.

A．analyze

B．assess

C．evaluate

D．compare

14.

A．month

B．week

C．year

D．decade

15.

A．economically

B．mathematically

C．spiritually

D．chemically

5 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. faith     B. support     C. instantly     D. establishments     E. available     F. thoroughly G. entitled     H. reflect     I. arise     J. represent     K. unrealistic

Zoos were originally created as places of entertainment, and their suggested involvement with conservation didn’t seriously     1     until about 30 years ago, when the Zoological Society of London held the first formal international meeting on the subject. Eight years later, a series of world conferences took place,     2     ‘The Breeding of Endangered Species’, and from this point onwards conservation became the zoo community’s buzzword. This commitment has now been clearly defined in The World Zoo Conservation Strategy (WZCS)，which –although an important and welcome document- does seem to be based on a/ an     3    optimism about the nature of the zoo industry.

The WZCS estimates that there are about 10000 zoos in the world, of which around 1000     4     a core of quality collections capable of participating in coordinated conservation programs. This is probably the document’s first failing, as I believe that 10000 is a serious reserve of the total number of places which claim to be zoological     5    . Of course it is difficult to get accurate data but, to put the issue into perspective, I have found that in a year of working in Eastern Europe, I discover fresh zoos on almost a weekly basis.

The second flaw in the reasoning of the WZCS document is its naive     6     in its 1000 core zoos. One would assume that the quality of these institutions would have been     7     examined, but it appears that the criterion for inclusion on this select list might merely be that the zoo is a member of a zoo federation or association. This might be a good starting point, working on the basis that members must meet certain standards, but again the facts don’t     8    the theory. The greatly respected American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AAZPA) has had extremely dubious, and even notorious (臭名昭著的) members. As they were always a collection of bad reputation, one is obliged to     9    upon the standards that the Zoo Federation sets when granting membership. The situation is even worse in developing countries where little money is     10    for redevelopment.

6 . We live in the age of envy. Career envy, kitchen envy, children envy, food envy, holiday envy. You name it, there’s an envy for it. Human beings have always felt what Aristotle defined in the fourth century BC as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune. But with the coming of social media, says Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, “envy is being taken to an extreme.” We are constantly bombarded by “Photoshopped lives”, he says, “and that applies a toll (严重的不良影响) on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant.”

Clinical psychologist Rachel Andrew says she is seeing more and more envy in her consulting room from people who “can’t achieve the lifestyle they want but which they see others have”. Our use of social media platforms, she says, amplifies this deeply disturbing psychological discord. “I think what social media has done is make everyone accessible for comparison,” she explains. “In the past, people might have just envied their neighbors, but now we can compare ourselves with everyone across the world.”

And those comparisons are now much less realistic, Andrew continues: “We all know that images can be filtered, that people are presenting the very best take on their lives.” We carry our envy amplification device around in our pockets, we sleep with it next to our pillows, and it tempts us 24 hours a day, the moment we wake up even if it is the middle of the night. “What I notice is that most of us can intellectualize what we see on social media platforms — we know that these images and narratives that are presented aren’t real, we can talk about it and rationalize it — but on an emotional level, it’s still pushing buttons. If those images or narratives tap into what we desire, but what we don’t have, then it becomes very powerful.”

No age group or social class is immune from envy, according to Andrew. In her consulting room she sees young women, self-conscious about how they look, who begin to follow certain accounts to find hair inspiration or makeup techniques, and end up envying the women they follow and feeling even worse about themselves. But she also sees the same pattern among older businessmen and women who start out looking for strategies and tips on social media websites, and then struggle to accept what they find, which is that some people seem to be more successful than they are. “Equally, it can be friends and family who bring out those feelings of envy, around looks, lifestyle, careers and parenting — because somebody is always doing it better on social media,” she says.

1. Which of the following is true about “the age of envy” in Paragraph 1?

A．Watching another’s good fortune used to be a pleasant thing to do

B．Human beings first learn about envy in the fourth century BC

C．Social media posts have become the source of envy today

D．People in the time of Aristotle don’t envy others’ lives

2. Rachel Andrew believes that the source of envy in her consulting room is________.

A．the feeling of being inferior after comparing to other people

B．the wish to have a better life than your next door neighbor

C．the desire to look cool in every social media photo

D．the lifestyle that is most chased after by others

3. According to Rachel Andrew, which of the following is a fact about envy?

A．Envy doesn’t usually apply to our family and close friends.

B．The older we get, the less likely we feel jealous about other people.

C．We get jealous when other people become the focus on social media.

D．Envy is an emotion that even rational people may not be able to avoid.

4. After “Age of Envy”, which of the following comes as the best subtitle for this passage?

A．How to Overcome Social Media Jealousy

B．Why Social Media Affects Our Mental Health

C．How Social Media Can Increase Feelings of Envy

D．Why Heavy Social Media Use Is Linked to Depression

7 . There are still many things that Peter Cooke would like to try his hand at--paper-making and feather-work are on his list. For the moment though, he will stick to the skill that he has been delighted to perfect over the past ten years: making delicate and unusual objects out of shells.

“Tell me if I am boring you,” he says, as he leads me round his apartment showing me his work. There is a fine line between being a bore and being an enthusiast, but Cooke need not worry: he fits into the latter category, helped both by his charm and by the beauty of the things he makes.

He points to a pair of shell-covered ornaments (装饰品) above a fireplace. “I shan’t be at all bothered if people don’t buy them because I have got so used to them, and to me they’re adorable. I never meant to sell my work commercially. Some friends came to see me about five years ago and said, ‘You must have an exhibition--people ought to see these. We’ll talk to a man who owns an art gallery’”. The result was an exhibition in London, at which 70 per cent of the objects were sold. His second exhibition opened at the gallery yesterday. Considering the enormous prices that the pieces command—around $2,000 for the ornament—an empty space above the fireplace would seem a small sacrifice for Cooke to make.

There are 86 pieces in the exhibition, with prices starting at £225 for a shell--flower in a crystal vase. Cooke insists that he has nothing to do with the prices and is cheerily open about their level: he claims there is nobody else in the world who produces work like his, and, as the gallery-owner told him, “Well, you’re going to stop one day and everybody will want your pieces because there won’t be any more.”

Cooke has created his own method and uses materials as and when he finds them. He uses the cardboard sent back with laundered shirts for his flower bases, a nameless glue bought from a sail-maker (‘If it runs out, I don’t know what I will do!’) and washing-up liquid to wash the shells. “I have an idea of what I want to do and it just does itself,” he says of his working method, yet the attention to detail, colour gradations and symmetry (对称) he achieves look far from accidental.

1. What can be learned about Peter Cooke from the first paragraph?

A．He has produced objects with different materials.

B．He was praised for his shell objects many years ago.

C．He hopes to work with other materials in the future.

D．He has written about his love for shell objects.

2. When looking round his apartment, the writer ________.

A．is attracted by Cooke’s personality

B．realizes he finds Cooke’s work boring

C．feels uncertain about giving Cooke his opinion

D．senses that Cooke wants his products to be admired

3. The “small sacrifice” in paragraph 3 refers to________.

A．the loss of Cooke’s ornaments

B．the display of Cooke’s ornaments

C．the cost of keeping Cooke’s ornaments

D．the space required to store Cooke’s ornaments

4. When talking about the artist’s working method, the writer implies that Cooke ________.

A．is unaware of the unique quality his work has

B．accepts that he sometimes makes mistakes

C．undervalues the materials that he uses

D．underrates his creative contribution

8 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. waste       B. universal       C. emotional       D. endure       E. expose       F. inspired       G. prize       H. reality

The Blooms of the Blood Thorns

The master said You must write what you see.

But what I see does not move me.

The master answered Change what you see.

—Louise Gluck

The rosebush of life is inevitably threaded with far more thorns (荆棘) than it ever is of blooms. In order to grasp one of those blossoms we come upon on occasion in life, we have to     1     the pain of the pricks (刺伤).

Life is full of pricks. From the loss of loved ones, to the pain of one-sided love, to the hopes we held for our lives that ran up against the cold steel walls of     2    , these pricks have the power to draw oozing (慢慢渗出的) blood from our souls. But the story of our lives is actually not the way in which we suffered pain and injury — but rather how we have found strength to rise up stronger.

The newly-crowned Nobel-winning American poet-laureate (桂冠诗人) Louise Gluck realized, when she was young, the redemptive (救赎的) power that     3     pain can bring. She experienced the “absence” of a sister, whose death before Gluck was born     4     theme of grief and loss in much of the poet’s work. Her teenager years were dominated by a struggle with a severe eating disorder. She later suffered the painful loss of her father, and, after her literary success, saw her marriage fall apart.

The poet, however, used these experiences as a(n) base for her poems. She filled books with the painful lessons her traumas (创伤) taught her. She squeezed the blood drawn by these experiences into her inkwell. She exorcized (驱除) the everyday traumas of her life — loss, desire, sadness and isolation — with the steady scratch of her pen on the page.

The themes of loss are     5     to the human condition. They have shaped us, for better or worse, and made us the fully human beings we are today. While her poems     6     readers to the nerves of a traumatized soul, they are also a tribute to the strength of their creator. They reveal that even in the depths of the greatest suffering, she has found a way to rob the rosebush of its     7    . By doing so, she has drawn us a map by which we may plan our own journey through the thorny pricks of life. Let’s learn from her experiences so that her hard-fought life lessons will not be in waste. As she wrote in her famous poetry collection, The Wild Iris, “At the end of my suffering there was a door.”

10 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

In Ningbo city, a young woman has made the bamboo product brand of her family’s company famous around the world,    1    (help)a fair number of bamboo farmers increase their income.

Wang Xiaoqing, born in the 1990s,    2    (find) that in the US, Chinese bamboo products were popular among customers,    3    many of them carried foreign brands, despite China being the “kingdom of bamboos”. She decided to return to China and build a bamboo product brand after finishing her education abroad in 2013.

In 2018,a bamboo table    4    (produce) by the company of Wang’s family shined at the first Global Bamboo Congress.“    5    fascinates westerners is the Chinese bamboo culture and its long history. It provides a sound foundation for the global    6    (expand) of China’s bamboo industry”, Wang said. Her company is    7    (current) engaged in the design, manufacturing and sales of bamboo products. It produces over 10 million bamboo products each year, 85 percent of which     8     (sell) in the global market.

Serving    9    vice president of the entrepreneurship promotion association for returned overseas students in Ningbo city, Wang plans to contribute more to rural vitalization. “I hope that we can turn villages into more beautiful places and make villagers get     10     (rich),”Wang said.