1 . 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.

Imagine you are out fishing on the high seas - the wind and water are clean and comfortable and you begin bringing up your first catch of the day. That's when everything goes wrong. Your fishing nets are tangled up (缠成一团) in older, abandoned fishing tool, and you're unable to untangle them. Your equipment    1    (ruin), and all of the fish you have worked so hard to catch are trapped. They will die    2    you are unable to draw or free them. Ghost fishing has claimed yet another victim.

Ghost fishing is what abandoned fishing tool does. It still catches fish, but no one benefits. Trapped fish die and attract scavengers (清道夫)    3     also get caught, creating a vicious cycle. In fact, lost fishing tool, or "ghost tool," is among    4    (great) killers in the oceans. This tool further reduces the already declining number of fish.

Environmental agencies estimate that 10 percent of all seawater litter is lost or deserted fishing tool    5    (equal) 640,000 tons every year. Fortunately, these agencies are asking why this is happening and what    6     be done to stop it.

It's not the intention of the majority of fishermen to lose their tool. In most circumstances bad weather is to blame. But in other cases fishermen throw their tool in the ocean on purpose, risking expensive fines. But to them, it's worth the risk    7    (free) up space onboard, cut fuel costs or avoid paying handling fees.    8     equipment loss is accidental or not, a strategy involving tool identification seems to be a practical solution.

By marking tool with electronic tags and utilizing GPS technology, owners are more likely to recover lost tool and less likely to abandon it. Currently, ownership regulations are reportedly very weak. Leading the effort for tagging fishing tool and creating accountability is the GGTI (Global Ghost Tool Initiative).    9     (launch) in 2015, the GGTI is the first organization of its kind. It's brought together an organization of governments, fishing-industry executives, seafood companies and non-profits. Their efforts to get back and recycle the tool    10    (improve) marine environment, protecting fish and fishermen's way of life.

Ghost fishing poses a serious threat to the fishing industry worldwide, and a global effort is needed to solve it.

2 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．Harmful substances in the smoke from homes.

B．Damp chemical gases from factory chimneys.

C．Smoke from homes mixed with dust in the air.

D．Mixture of fog, smoke and other waste gases.

2.

A．Harmful gases rise and fall between layers of cold and warm air.

B．Smoke and chemical gases build up under a layer of warm air.

C．Smoke and waste gases remain near the ground as cold air pours in.

D．Thick smoke and gases blown by the wind pile up above warm air.

3.

A．Temperature inversion.	B．Solar radiation.
C．Automobile exhausts.	D．Foggy weather.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one more word than you need.

A. conserve             B. wrinkly             C. stationary             D. exceptional             E. oddities             F. nursing       G. timely             H. sounding             I. generalize             J. comprise             K. rules

The Curious World of Bats

Not all bats are unbelievably adorable, like the one below. Many of them have     1     faces and large ears that help them “see” in the dark, using echo location (回声定位). But all bats are, without a doubt,     2     creatures.

Scientists are typically reluctant to     3     about bats because they make up such a large and diverse group of winged animals. With nearly 1, 500 species, bats     4     about one-fifth of all mammal (哺乳动物) species on Earth. But one thing that can be said about them as a group is that they are, in not- so-scientific terms, very odd. “They break all the     5    ,” said Cori Lausen, a bat expert at the environmental group Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

Being able to fly is just one of their     6    , since mammals rarely fly. Apart from that, bats can also push their heart rate to extreme highs and lows-as slow as one beat per minute. Many bat species can go into a period of deep sleep, known as “torpor”, for a few hours a day or even for weeks to     7     energy when it’s cold or food is unavailable. And while most small mammals have short lives and lots of babies, some bats can live for two decades or more and typically have just one baby per year.

For how much energy they need, it’s also surprising that many bat species, including most of those in the US, rely on insects alone for food. They have to eat ridiculous quantities of them. A mom that is     8     a baby can catch more than 4,000 insects in one night.

Oddly, although bats can fly, they can’t easily take off from a(n)     9     position, like most birds and insects do. That’s one reason why they hang upside down-bats have to gain the momentum they need by falling. “For them, it’s not upside down,” Frick said. “It’s flight-side ready!”

While bats remain highly understudied relative to birds and other mammals, scientists are     10     the alarm. In North America, more than half of all bat species are at risk of severe population decline. Climate change, they say, threatens to only speed up their extinction.

4 . 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.

In 1831, a 22-year-old English biologist called Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in Plymouth and set off on an incredible voyage. His aim was to observe the natural world in places     1     had not been studied in much detail. Almost 200 years later, another mission, the Darwin 200, has invited a team of conservationists to retrace back the Beagle’s journey.

HMS Beagle’s mission was to map the harbours of South America. Darwin was invited along     2     (survey) the natural world. His observations on the Galapagos Islands, around 560 miles off the coast of Ecuador, changed the way Darwin saw nature,     3     (lead) to Darwin’s most famous work: his theory of evolution (进化论). This explained     4     species change over time to adapt to their environments, a process called natural selection. It has been described as “    5     (big) single idea in the history of human thought”.

What is Darwin 200’s mission? The Darwin200 ship     6     (sail) more than 40,000 miles and stop at 32 ports in four continents. Specially     7     (choose) conservationists will join at different stages for a week each to carry out wildlife studies.    8     the journey, the ship’s crew will make films that explain Charles Darwin’s discoveries.

The Darwin 200 team will travel in a 50-metre-long Dutch sailing ship called Oosterschelde, which     9     (build) in 1918 and has been restored fully for this voyage. The ship’s captain said, “She has sailed the distance from here to the Moon and back twice!    10     I may handle the most difficult situations, I trust her to bring me back home safely.”

The ship is due to reach the Galapagos Islands in April 2025

5 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible. 

Microplastics: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

People joke that someone suffering from paranoia (妄想症) sees danger everywhere, thinking someone is out to get him. In the case of microplastics, you don’t need to have paranoia to be worried about them being everywhere, because they basically are!

What exactly are microplastics? They are particles (颗粒) of any type of plastic that are less than 5 millimeters in diameter (直径). They have resulted from the plastic pollution widespread in the world today.

When plastic is exposed to environmental forces, it breaks down into these tiny particles, which, in turn, do not disappear but continue to exist for hundreds or even thousands of years. Every piece of plastic that has ever been made is still on Earth today, except for what has been burned. Often mistaken for food, plastics and microplastics in oceans and on beaches are often consumed by marine animals, which is harmful. Research has linked microplastics to cancer and other problems in animals.

Whatever you think about these particles, taking them in is easier than you think. When you heat food in a plastic dish in the microwave, microplastics get into your food. The water from a plastic water bottle contains the particles as well. After taking surveys of microplastics in air, water and seafood, scientists estimate that people may easily be eating 5 grams of plastic a week. Researchers don’t know yet if or how this will affect humans. Microplastics have been found in human tissue samples, and no one yet knows how long they stay in the human body or what problems may arise.

Not until the amount of plastic waste in the world is reduced will microplastics decrease. So, while the evidence is still missing of the effect microplastics have on people’s health, reusing and recycling plastic is a no-brainer.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

At first, the scientists wondered whether it was a mistake. Just 21 days     1     leaving the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, an arctic fox had arrived in Greenland. And in less than three months, the fox made it to Canada.

The fox averaged nearly 30 miles a day — some days, though, it walked almost 100 miles. The data was real, the scientists decided as the fox kept going. The creature’s traveling last year,     2     (document) in a recent paper, wowed Tarroux and his fellow Norwegian researcher Eva,     3     the animal is known for its endurance and ability to survive in harsh polar areas.

Scientists already knew that some of the foxes, native     4     Arctic areas all around the Northern Hemisphere, made long journeys: DNA exchange links far-flung fox populations in areas connected only by sea ice.

But the fox these researchers followed stood out for just     5     fast it covered more than 2,700 miles — and shed light on far-north fox sighting which explorers wondered about as far back as the 1800s.

“We didn’t really know how they     6     (do) that and how long it would take for an individual to do this kind of trip,” Tarroux said.

The coastal fox the researchers tracked, also known as a blue fox, landed in Ellesmere Island in Canada on 1 July 2018. Of the 50 or 60 animals the scientists put trackers on for a study, it was the only one     7     ventured outside of Norway.

The researchers think the fox     8     have set off because of a food shortage, but they’re not sure. The tracker stopped     9     (work) in February, so researchers no longer know the fox’s whereabouts, but it     10     (detect) for the last time on the same Canadian island in the Nunavut territory.

7 . 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. chaos        B. consume        C. plentiful       D. discharge        E. evolutionarily     F. extent G. freeze   H. mechanism       I. novel          J. subsequently     K. unstable

Science in Images

Oyster mushrooms feature in cuisines around the world, but they should be off the menu for hungry worms -- which these delicious mushrooms will kill and eat. Now researchers finally know how they do it.

A study published in Science Advances details how oyster mushrooms use a particular poisonous substance to freeze and get rid of mushroom-eating roundworms called nematodes (线虫). The mushrooms, which grow on nutrient-poor dead wood, then     1     the worms for nutrition.

“Nematodes happen to be the most     2     animals these mushrooms encounter. So I think,     3    , this cross-kingdom interaction is very interesting,” says study senior author.

The study team of geneticists, biochemists and biologists had previously found that oyster mushrooms release an unidentified poisonous substance that will somehow     4     the worms within minutes and cause a chemical element to flow into their cells, killing them. This     5     differs from those used by other meat-eating mushrooms and could be unique to oyster mushrooms.

For their new work, the researchers grew and analyzed samples of the mushroom’s tissue, finding no noticeable poison even when they broke it up. They reasoned that whatever was killing the worms must be a kind of     6     compound that disappears into air when disturbed. When they damaged the oyster mushroom tissue again and     7     analyzed the nearby air, they finally found a nerve gas that turned out to be contained with tiny, special-shaped structures on the mushroom surface. When nematodes touch the mushrooms, these structures     8     their gas, disturbing the worms’ cell walls to cause immobility and death. The worm is then digested by the mushrooms.

Before this study, “we underestimated the     9     to which wild mushrooms defend against or consume nematodes,” notes Nick Talbot, a geneticist at Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, England. The study demonstrates “a very     10     approach,” he adds. “These organisms are really difficult to work on, and Dr. Hsueh is showing that you can do some really amazing work with them.”

8 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．They have been sent to wildlife parks for protection.

B．Their habitats have been well-protected.

C．They have been taken care of by locals.

D．Their population has almost doubled.

2.

A．She fought against illegal hunting.	B．She helped to cure their disease.
C．She improved their living conditions.	D．She was engaged in preserving forests.

3.

A．To teach people how to treat gorillas.	B．To boost the economy of Uganda.
C．To better the Batwa people’s lives.	D．To raise funds for wildlife protection.

9 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．5%.

B．80%.

C．40%.

D．10%.

2.

A．Polluting the environment.

B．Destroying wildlife habitats.

C．Endangering new species.

D．Hunting to a great extent.

3.

A．To appeal to people to protect wildlife.

B．To emphasize the importance of the Earth.

C．To describe different ways to stop pollution.

D．To analyze the reasons for wildlife’s disappearing.

10 . Antarctic Tourism: Should We Just Say No?

More people are visiting Antarctic, the frozen continent than ever before.     1     This has brought a new urgency to the question of how much, if any, tourism should be allowed on the icy continent.

The distance most visitors travel to reach Antarctica makes carbon emissions a serious problem.     2     One study calculated that each tourist between 2016 and 2020 was effectively melting around 83 tonnes of snow, due largely to emissions from vacation ships.

    3     The Antarctic Treaty, established in 1961 to provide governance for the continent, operates on a consultative basis, which means all 56 parties have to agree before a change can be put into action. The last major decision on tourism was a measure passed in 2009 that prohibits vacation ships carrying more than 500 passengers from making landings. That regulation has still not officially been carried out as not every signatory country has accepted it domestically.

There is clear agreement that something needs to change, but no agreement on what those changes should be.     4    

A．The number of visitors hit 100,000 for the first time this tourist season, a 40% jump over the previous record.

B．The Antarctic is at risk not just because of the breakability of its environment, but due to the lack of a single governing body.

C．Should landings be made at a larger number of sites for instance, or should we aim to keep the human footprint as small as possible?

D．If what you really want is to connect with snow and ice and you’re in the northern half, can you catch a train to the nearest snow region instead?

E．The average per-person carbon emissions for an Antarctic tourist are 3.76 tonnes – about the total sum that an individual typically generates in an entire year.

F．There is so little regulation now that almost anything that will protect the areas by an official legal source rather than self-regulated would be really positive.