1 . Eartha Mae Kitt was born into a poor family in South Carolina in 1927. When Eartha was eight, her mother married. The husband did not want Eartha to live with them because of her mixed race.

Eartha was sent to New York City to live with an aunt in the African-American neighborhood of Harlem. The relationship was difficult. The aunt helped pay for piano and dance lessons for Eartha. But she also beat the girl. Eartha would run away after beatings.

Earth lived in the streets and worked in a factory as a young teenager. But she kept up her dance lessons. One day she decided to try out for a famous African-American dance company. Soon, Eartha was performing in shows around the world with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe.

In Paris, Eartha left the dance company to sing in a nightclub. Her voice was unusual - but very appealing. She learned French quickly and gained French fans. The film director Orson Welles discovered Eartha singing in Paris. He called her “the most exciting woman in the world”. Welles asked her to play a lead part in the play he was directing and starring in.

Eartha returned to New York and appeared in the Broadway show New Faces of 1952. A humorous song she sang about a bored, spoiled woman became famous. She soon signed a recording agreement with the record company. Eartha’s songs were all daring, especially for the 1950s. She even made a sexy Christmas song “Santa Baby”, which became her biggest hit.

Eartha's first role in a film was in the 1957 movie Mark of the Hawk with Nat King Cole. She was very careful about choosing her roles in films. She rejected parts that were not respectful to people of color. She said if her choices were bad, it would not help the black actors who came after her.

Eartha Mae Kitt was at home when she died on December 25, 2008. The cause was colon cancer.

1. What made Eartha leave her parents?

A．Her poor family.	B．Her mixed race.
C．Her cruel aunt.	D．Her dance lessons.

2. Eartha’s aunt can be described as ________ .

A．cruel and mean	B．violent but honest
C．considerate and friendly	D．helpful but unkind

3. What most probably made Welles be interested in Eartha at first?

A．Her dance.	B．Her beauty.
C．Her voice.	D．Her fans.

4. It can be inferred from the passage that _______.

A．Eartha starred in the film directed by Welles

B．Eartha was strongly against treating people of color unfairly

C．American songs in the 1950s were all daring

D．Mark of the Hawk was Eartha’s most successful song

2 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

Grammy - winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today's most popular     1     (musician) of his generation. Up to now, his ground-breaking Virtual Choir     2     (unite) worldwide singers through the use of technology.

The Choir began as a simple experiment in social media when a fan of Eric recorded a video of herself singing Sleep and shared it on YouTube.     3     (move) by the video, Eric responded by rounding up his fans to make videos,     4     he then joined together into one performance. Eric was     5     inspired by this experiment that he decided to push the concept to the next level. He filmed     6     (he) when conducting one piece of his music for singers to follow and asked them to record and upload their voice part onto the Internet. Thus Virtual Choir 1: Lux Aurumque     7     (produce). From then on, more and more singers throughout the world joined the VC to sing     8     one voice.

Now, Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir is a     9     (globe) phenomenon. It helps connect ordinary people together and make the world     10     better place.

3 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

Look at the graphite(石墨) tip of your pencil. It's hard     1     (imagine) anyone carving detailed sculptures into that tiny surface.     2     Salavat Fidai, a Russian artist, does just that.

Fidai says the process is     3     (extreme) hard and time-consuming. Graphite is fragile, and his sculptures are so small that they're measured in millimeters and even microns(微米). To see     4     he's doing, he has to look through a microscope, a tool     5     helps people do close work such as making     6     (watch) or studying errors. Carving one sculpture can take 8 hours-or     7     week!

When he started out, he carved giant pencils. As he became more comfortable, he switched to pencils of regular size. Sometimes he works     8     mechanical pencils with even narrower graphite rods(笔杆).

Fidai's sculptures used to break a lot while he was working. "This rarely     9     (happen) now," he says. "I have experience. I am calm and focused."

Fidai is always testing his limits,     10     (try) to find easier ways to do more difficult things. His advice to you? ”Experiment all the time! Look for new materials and new ways.”

4 . Albrecht Durer was born in Nuremberg in 1471, in present day Germany. He was a painter, writer and engraver(雕刻师), but his first and probably greatest artistic influence was in the medium of printmaking.

Albrecht’s father was a goldsmith(金匠) and the young Albrecht naturally became his student, learning shaping and engraving jewelry. He also started learning from a local artist Michael Wolgemut, who specialized in artistic woodcuts for books. Durer’s first contact with art was in the woodcut printing range, so it is little wonder that he went on to become expert in this field. He actually expanded the craft of producing pictures for printing, giving it more depth, and he raised print-making into an art-form. Towards the end of the century (1497—1500), Durer produced an impressive series of religious woodcuts. Indeed, it was in 1513—1514 that Durer produced the three extraordinary engravings (“Knight, Death and DeviP”; “Melencolia”; “Saint Jerome in his Cell”) that had a strong influence on the art world and came to be known as the Master Engravings.

Durer’s success as a printmaker rapidly spread across Europe. He was highly aware of his artistic image and authorship, which is obvious in his remarkable signature. As his art became increasingly valuable, Durer’s signature was always copied, which even led him to accuse the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi of repeatedly copying his works and signature and selling them off as originals. In the end, the court ruled that Raimondi could continue making copies of Durer’s, as long as he didn’t reproduce the artist’s signature.

Durer died in 1528 and was buried in Nuremberg. Like most famous Italian artists, Durer probably felt himself to be an “artist-king”, and his self-portraits(自画像)seem undoubtedly to show a man sure of his own gift.

1. Which of the following best describes Albrecht Durer?

A．Open-minded.

B．Generous.

C．Easy-going.

D．Talented.

2. What do we know about Durer’s three great engravings?

A．They were made with the help of his father.

B．They were created in the early 16th century.

C．They were recognized as a new way of painting.

D．They were influenced by the art world of his time.

3. What can we infer from paragraph 3?

A．Durer got angry with the court.

B．Durer’s signature was easy to copy.

C．Durer’s reputation as a printmaker was high.

D．Durer had a good relationship with Raimondi.

5 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452—May 2, 1519) , widely     1     (consider) to be one of the greatest painters of all time, and perhaps the most intelligent and capable man to ever have lived, was an Italian painter. Born and raised in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo is famous for his     2     (real) paintings, such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, as well as for influential drawings such as the Vitruvian Man. Of his works, only a few paintings survive, together with his notebooks     3     (contain) drawings. It was said     4     when Leonardo Da Vinci first came to his master's workshop, he was told to draw eggs. His master made him observe and sketch an egg     5     (repeat). Day     6     day, Da Vinci was told to draw eggs all the time. One day, Da Vinci finally got tired of it.     7    , he came to his master and complained about that task. His master gave a patient     8     (explain) to him that repetition was the key to perfection. After that, Da Vinci followed his master's advice with an open mind. He kept on drawing eggs for three years,     9     laid the foundation for him.     10     it not been for his master, he would not have become one of the greatest artists in the world.

6 . It has been more than 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci died. He was so ahead of his time that people are still talking about how smart he was.

The inventor, painter, scientist, mathematician, musician, writer and thinker painted the most famous artworks in the world, including Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He also invented a robot, a helicopter and a diving suit and thought about catching solar energy, besides, he planned a clean, healthy and modern city and made dozens of important discoveries about the human body.

Leonardo lived from 1452 to 1519. He was Italian, born in a village near Vinci. From the age of 14 he was a trainee to a painter and goldsmith. This studio in Florence, Italy, was a busy place with lots of thinkers, artists and skilled businessmen working around him. Though he spent years doing jobs such as tidying up and mixing paints, he could listen to all the things everyone discussed and start forming his own ideas about drawing.

Leonardo’s earliest surviving drawing is a pen and ink sketch of the nearby Amo River. And though this wasn’t drawn until 1473, when he was about 21, he probably he probably sketched scenes and ideas long before this.

Mona Lisa is one of the world’s most famous paintings. It is regarded as the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. People have always been attracted by how Leonardo made his subject’s face so interesting: Is she smiling or smirking; happy or sad? Like humans in real life, no one really knows how she was feeling.

Leonardo had permission from hospitals to study the bodies of people who had recently died. He made more than 240 detailed drawings of the human bodies. He wrote more than 13, 000 words on the subject. Unfortunately, Leonardo didn’t publish this work and took many years for the rest of the world to discover what Leonardo knew.

1. What can we infer about Leonardo da Vinci from Paragraph 2?

A．He caught solar energy.

B．He created a modern city.

C．He was the most famous artist.

D．He was a man with many talents.

2. When did Leonardo start his own idea about drawing?

A．When running his own studio.

B．When working as a trainee

C．After inventing a robot.

D．After discussing with businessmen.

3. What’s the text mainly about?

A．Leonardo da Vinci’s early drawing life.

B．Lisa Gherardini, a mysterious woman.

C．Leonardo da Vinci, a man ahead of his time.

D．Mona Lisa, one of the world’s most famous painting.

7 . 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。

After participating in the reality TV show Idol Producer, the singer-songwriter, Cai Xukun, rose to fame overnight. Since then, Cai     1     (top) Chinese music charts with multiple singles. On July 26, KUN released his latest single Young,     2     reached a million sales within just 20 seconds.

A reviewer wrote on QQ Music: “When    3     (listen) to the song，I just seemed to go back to youth again.” “My works     4     (be) like my children and I have put my best effort into them，” KUN told the Global Times. “And I always get     5     (inspire) when it’s quiet，deep into     6     night,” he once said. “Sometimes，I can write songs with a melody 1 heard in a dream.”

To nurture his introspection (自省），KUN attends various musical     7     (perform). “I just like to do everything，all for my music，all for my art.” he told i-D.     8     KUN loves performing onstage, when the lights go down, he prefers to fall back into his world. With such talent and devotion     9     music，it seems that KUN will continue to make his mark in the     10     (compete) Chinese music industry.

8 . The exact location from where Vincent van Gogh is likely to have painted his final masterpiece, perhaps just hours before his death, has been determined with the help of a postcard.

The scene in Tree Roots, a painting of trunks (树干）and roots growing on a hillside, was first spotted on a card dating from 1900 to 1910 by Van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institute Van Gogh. Following a comparative study of the painting, the postcard and the current condition of the hillside, researchers concluded that it was highly possible that the place where Van Gogh made his final brushstrokes had been unearthed.

The main trunk in the painting has survived the 130 years since the Dutch master’s death. It has long been believed that Van Gogh had been working on Tree Roots shortly before he took his own life with a shot to the chest. Andries Bonger, the brother-in-law of Van Gough's brother Theo, had described in a letter how the “morning before his death” Van Gogh had “painted a forest scene, full of sun and life” Van der Veen said, t4The sunlight painted by Van Gogh suggests that the last brushstrokes were painted towards the end of the afternoon.”

Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, said the spot, some 150 meters from the hotel where Van Gogh had stayed the last 70 days of his life, would likely have been passed on a number of occasions by him. “The scene on the postcard shows very clear similarities to the shape of the roots on Van Gogh’s painting,” he said. “He must often have passed by the location when going to the fields behind the castle of Auvers, where he painted several times during the last week of his life and where he would take his own life.”

1. What is Tree Roots?

A．A trunk.

B．A hillside.

C．A drawing.

D．A postcard.

2. What do we know about Van Gogh according to the text?

A．He had a close relationship with his brother.

B．What he drew in his paintings all came from real life.

C．He was working on his artwork shortly before killing himself.

D．He was so sick in his last days that he spent all the time in a hotel.

3. Where did Van Gogh kill himself according to Teio Meedendorp?

A．In the fields.	B．In a local hotel.
C．In the castle of Auvers.	D．In the scene on the postcard.

4. What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A．To remember a famous painter. Van Gogh.

B．To introduce Van Gogh's life and his works.

C．To describe the influence of Van Gogh in art.

D．To tell the place in Van Gogh’s last painting.

9 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式｡

Mozart showed musical gifts at    1    early age, composing at five and performing in public only a year later.    2    (drive) by the thirst for wealth, his father took him on a performance tour around the French and English royal families,     3     he made a deep    4    (impress) on everyone with his     striking skills. During the tour, he also had his first music    5    (publish) and wrote his    6    (early) symphonies. After the family’s returning home late in 1766, he began his bittersweet life    7    a musician. Mozart died when still young. Throughout his short life, he studied, taught, wrote and played music. Even by working hard, he found    8    challenging to make ends meet(使生活收支平衡), borrowing money from his friends at times.    9    , his music made him happy and for more than two hundred years his   music     10    (make)others happy as well.

10 . Meet the man who isn’t running to the supermarket to stock goods -- thanks to his tiny urban garden which has kept him in fruits and vegetables for nine months. This green-thumbed Italian who moved to London six years ago has grown so many vegetables during lockdown that he hasn’t been to the grocery store for any in nine months.

29-year-old artist Alessandro Vitale has grown chilli (辣椒) on his windowsill for years, so he was delighted when he moved into an apartment with a shared garden last year. He set to work transforming half the 8×5m garden area into a growing place, created a wall for vegetables out of recycled water bottles, and made planters and a greenhouse.

In his first harvest this year, Alessandro managed to produce an impressive 30 different kinds of vegetables, including cabbage, carrots, garlic, fennel, leeks, cauliflower, and broccoli. Alessandro got in an impressive 35kg of tomatoes from just six plants, and he’s picked 10kg of 17 different types of chilli. Eager to be environmental, Alessandro’s crops are 100% organic: He uses wild nettle (荨麻) from a park for pest control, and the fallen leaves to make fertilizer.

Alessandro said: “When I was a kid I used to help my grandpa out in the garden. I remember he would import chilli seeds from all over the world and he would have tones of plants.”

Though Alessandro works full-time 45 hours a week, as soon as he’s home he spends a couple of hours tending to the garden. “My favorite thing to make with is jam and sauces from the chillis,” he says. He now runs his own YouTube channel SpicyMoustache, sharing urban gardening tips and encouraging others to create urban green spaces.

1. What can be inferred about Alessandro from the first paragraph?

A．He had some green fingers.

B．He never went to the supermarket.

C．He was locked in London six years ago.

D．He was good at planting vegetables and fruits.

2. Why were wild nettle and the fallen leaves mentioned in paragraph 3?

A．To show what he grows.

B．To show the natural beauty.

C．To show his gardening talent.

D．To show that the harvest is healthy.

3. How will people feel after watching his video?

A．Encouraged.

B．Unsure.

C．Upset.

D．Ashamed.