1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.breakdown               B.masterpieces          C.committed                 D. reduced          E.extreme   F.allowances G.memorable       H.security       I.   attribute          J.tribute        K.conducted

The little thief: How Charlie Chaplin survived his hungry childhood

A recently unearthed interview with an old friend recalls how the actor was looked after by a kindly ‘foster mother’ who made sure he did the right thing.

The     1     poverty endured by Charlie Chaplin while growing up in the slums (贫民窟) of Victorian London    2    him to stealing and being scolded by the woman who took care of him, according to an interview with one of his childhood friends that has remained unheard in the British Film Institute for almost 40 years.

Effie Wisdom, whose aunt gave him a home from home when he needed it most, lamented that Chaplin “had a terrible life” as a child, “always hungry”, dressed in “ragged”, filthy clothes - no doubt later inspiring the comic genius who created the Tramp, society’s eternal victim and one of cinema’s most     3     characters.

In 1983, aged 92, Wisdom gave an interview in which she recalled first meeting Chaplin when he was five and she was seven, with her aunt becoming his “foster mother”, as he used to tell her.

She recalled: “My aunt used to feed him because there was no social    4     in those days, no free milk, no children’s     5    , nothing. You never starved and yet you were on the breadline.”

“He used to go up Lambeth Walk and pinch . He’d come home with four eggs one day in his pocket. He came home with a pair of boots one day he’d nicked.”

Her aunt scolded him: “Do you want me to get the police? If you go on doing this, you’ll be locked up. You realize that, don’t you?”

The interview was     6    by Kevin Brownlow, one of Britain’s leading experts in silent films after researching Unknown Chaplin, the acclaimed three-part 1983 documentary series that he made with David Gill. It has been stored in the British Film Institute’s archive (档案) ever since.

Chaplin’s parents were music-hall performers and his mother was abandoned by her husband. His mother was then    7    to an asylum (精神病院).

After Chaplin’s death in 1977, Wisdom had written to his widow (遗孀), with memories of his mother’s desperate concern for her sons, Charlie and Sydney “I told Lady Chaplin I knew Charlie when he was a little boy. I used to play with him out in the street. When his mother had a nervous    8    , she said to my aunt, ‘If I had to go away, you wouldn’t let my lovely sons go into an orphanage?’ My aunt said, ‘No, I’ll look after them, don’t you worry’. My aunt looked after them, fed them and clothed them.”

Chaplin never forgot that. Wisdom paid     9    to his generosity towards her after finding success in America: “He used to send my aunt so much money because she used to look after him.”He also wrote to her.

Chaplin, with his derby hat (圆顶窄边礼帽)，toothbrush moustache and impossibly large boots, was the protagonist in such    10    as City Lights, The Great Dictator and Limelight.

Wisdom, who left school at 13 and worked in a London pub into her 80s, recalled his natural comedic talent, “He was always falling about being funny. He’d get an old table out in the yard, and he’d get all the kids in there, and get up there, put an old pair of trousers on, an old coat and a stick when he was 12. The kids loved that, he used to fall off the table, then he’d get up.” But she joked: “I never thought he’d get to where he got.”

She remembered him writing to her aunt from America, telling her that he would visit on his return to England: “He said, I’m not like when I left England with nothing. I’m going on to be a rich man.”

She added that Chaplin stayed at the Ritz (一家豪华酒店) and turned up at his aunt’s home in-a chauffeur (私人司机)-driven Rolls-Royce: “He invited my aunt and my uncle and me to the Ritz. My aunt says to me, ‘Of course I’d never been in a place like that’.”

From the Gardian

2 . 根据句意，选择单词并以其适当形式填空。

Talking about Beijing Opera, we cannot forget to mention one of its greatest performers—Mei Lanfang. Born in Beijing in 1894, he was commonly     1     as a brilliant artist. He started to learn the art of Beijing Opera at the age of eight and made his on-stage debut at age eleven and by the age of 20, he had become a leading actor in Beijing Opera’s dan role. With the     2     of bringing Beijing Opera to the world, he began to travel abroad to give performances. He     3     great success after eight years of attempts. The     4    factors for his success was his unique style and his     5    from the traditions.

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Do note that there is one word more than you need.

A. untraditional        B. referred          C. awards        D. framed       AB. critic     AC. covers AD. gesture        BC. count        BD. tending        CD. genius       ABC. recognizing

Each year, the bright light of the Nobel Prize in literature falls across our cultural canvas and illuminates the work of a major writer.

While     1     of previous years have gone to writers of prose, poetry and drama, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, announced on Oct 13 that American singer Bob Dylan, 75, was this year’s winner. However, the prize wasn’t given for his 2004 self-penned autobiography, but “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

It is certainly a(n)     2     choice. According to Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, arts awards have almost always exclusively had an inherent bias toward so-called “high culture”, a category     3     not to include people who got their start singing in coffeehouses.

With that said, the Swedish Academy’s selection can be seen as symbolic in its implication. By picking Dylan, the Academy has made a bold     4     to expand the definition of “literature”. It has, in effect, opened the doors to popular culture, often     5     to as “low culture”.

We live in a world where people who read comic books, watch television shows, listen to podcasts and pop music, are often also those who enjoy poetry and opera. And the Nobel, in     6     Dylan’s work as literature, acknowledges that artists create works of popular culture with just as much care, control, courage and     7     as Ernest Hemingway did sitting down at his typewriter.

Dylan experts can battle over whether or not the singer indeed writes poetry–he was given the prize for his lyrics and music.

If music and lyrics count as literature, as plays have done, could not other forms? Could we, someday, see a Nobel in literature go to US TV producer David Simon, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, or even US singer Beyonce?

As Los Angeles Times pop music     8     Robert Hilburn said about Dylan’s work: “He’s a great cultural figure because of his words and his ideas.”

And for all the flash and bang of any performed art or filmed project, it’s the words that     9    , wrote Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times.

American TV series Breaking Bad (2008-2013) didn’t exist without US actor Bryan Cranston’s brilliant performance–but he couldn’t have gotten there without the words on the page.

Dylan’s Nobel says that words don’t have to be bound within     10     to be literature. It’s possible the Swedish Academy will back off its radical choice. But for now, literature is all around us. Read it, listen to it or watch it.

4 . 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. healing       B. prioritize       C. assigned       D. symbolizing E. secondary       F. peculiar G. featuring       H. engaged       I. patterned       J. followed K. embracing

The Healing Power of Art

Dreams have no age limit. A 79 year old lady who restarts her life by painting proves that it is never too late to     1     oneself.

Meeting the 77-year-old Li Yufeng at her workshop in the Lingang Special Area, I am soon infected by her energy and passion.     2     pumpkins, Hami melons, pebbles and playing cards, a number of her paintings hang on the walls. All her works are inspired by the everyday things in her life. As the Mid-Autumn Festival has just passed when we meet, Li's latest works portrays a moon-cake     3     with a dragon and phoenix.

Natural and peaceful, her paintings have     4     power.   They   enable   viewers to   feel the   beauty of small things, which we easily ignore in our daily lives. Last year, she was invited to hold a painting exhibition at the Xuhui Art Museum. To many people's surprise, Li     5     with art just three years ago.

Li spent her childhood in   the   confusion   of   civil   war.   Her father was     6     to Xinjiang   Uygur Autonomous Region as a teacher in a middle school, and Li and her mother     7     him to   the land of rugged mountains and vast desert basins.

"The green lawn and the camphor tree in front of our house in Human have always been impressed in my childhood memories," said Yin.

    8     prosperity and freshness, green is Li's favorite color, which she frequently uses in her paintings. She recalls that she wore a green tweed coat on her wedding day in 1963.

Li used to work as an electric welde（r   电焊工）. Lacking proper eye protection, the flash from the   welding equipment   eventually   damaged   her vision. However,   that   hasn't   stopped   her from     9     colors.

Li became fully engaged in painting after her husband's passing away in 2017. Painting brought her into the present moment and let her forget the pain of losing her husband and her diseases. In the flow of painting, it is hard to dwell on so many troubles. For Li, her improved painting skills are     10     to the joy that art brings her.