1 . 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。

Carved from mountains in Yunnan province, the Hong-he Hani Rice Terraces reach over more than 160 square kilometers to create a most spectacular landscape.

Since ancient times, the local Hani people have channeled spring water from mountains and forests     1     (water) the terraced fields. Some terraces are as big as football fields, and others no larger than a bed sheet. They climb     2     riverbank locations at less than 500 meters above sea level to heights of more than 1,800 meters. The     3     (common) used description “stairways to heaven” is most suitable here.

However, the wonder remained largely unknown to the rest of the world for     4     (century). Nobody paid much attention to these terraces until     5     2000s. New roads arrived and the local government was determined to get the terraces     6     (place) on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. This     7     (achieve) in 2013. Over the past decade, it has become impossible to keep such a wonder under wraps. Photography fans have crowded in, taking postcard-perfect pictures and then     8     (post) them on social media.

Although the terraces shine with bright green during the summer growing season, the landscape is most     9     (appeal) from November to late April. During this period, the water-filled terraces turn into natural mirrors     10     reflect every sunrise and sunset.

2 . It is late autumn—millions of gardeners across the northern hemisphere, pulled on their thickest sweaters, spent hours clearing large piles of leaves and packed them into plastic bags at the end of driveways.

In the US alone, nearly 10 million tonnes of garden waste go to landfill every year. That is a large amount of effort, not just from an environmental viewpoint but from that of our aching backs, too. So where does this advice come from? Well, it largely comes from the belief that thick fallen leaves can make plants under them unable to breathe, especially shorter grass. They shut down important photosynthesis (光合作用) and get in the way of the growth of the shorter grass. However, this received wisdom has recently been questioned by researchers at Wisconsin University.

The key finding of their new research was that although clearing fallen leaves is one of the most common gardening practices, it makes very little sense. In natural ecosystems, fallen leaves help return nutrients necessary for healthy plant growth to the soil, which greatly improves soil condition. Removing leaves year after year breaks this ecological (生态的) balance. Letting some leaves stick around to cover your garden is a great way to help your grass and the local ecosystem.

They further explained that if up to 50percent of your grass lawn (草坪) is covered by fallen leaves, you might as well go back indoors and put your feet up. The advantages of this light leaf coverage far outweigh the disadvantages—the leaves will quickly break down and help next year’s lawn grow far better than if you had cleared them. Only at over 50 percent coverage do the Wisconsin researchers recommend clearing.

So why not consider leaving the leaves? Save time, carbon and effort, and in exchange get a healthier lawn from this garden waste—that seems like a pretty good deal. And how many plastic bags could be saved by simply not binning fallen leaves every year? In the US alone, about 700 million.

1. What does the author describe in paragraph 1?

A．An amazing autumn game.	B．A common sight in gardens.
C．A hot attraction in the north.	D．An extreme weather event.

2. What is the received wisdom?

A．Fallen leaves need not be cleared.

B．Fallen leaves protect shorter grass.

C．Fallen leaves block photosynthesis.

D．Fallen leaves are hard to break down.

3. The new research finds clearing fallen leaves makes little sense, because ________.

A．it ruins city image	B．it breaks gardening rules
C．it affects local economy	D．it causes ecological damage

4. What’s the author’s attitude to Wisconsin University’s study?

A．Doubtful.

B．Positive.

C．Unclear.

D．Worried.

3 . A sleeping animal cannot look for food or flee from danger. But the fact that sleep is widespread among animals shows its restorative powers are essential. Some animals, though, try to have their cake and eat it. Dolphins and ducks sleep with half their brains, leaving the other half on guard. A paper in Science by Dr Le reports another innovative workaround. Chinstrap penguins take their sleep in thousands of naps, tiny micro- sleeps-or at least when they are nesting.

Chinstraps sleep with either their whole brain or just one half. Data confirmed they sleep in the ocean or on land. Ducks sleep in long periods, while the penguins nod of for several seconds at a time, hundreds of times an hour. The naps average 4 seconds in length; 72% lasted less than 10 seconds. Micro-sleeps aren’t unknown. Exhausted humans, like jet-lagged (倒时差) tourists and parents of newborn babies, can experience them. Totaling the duration, the researchers concluded Chinstraps get around 12 hours of sleep daily.   

Two explanations are given for Chinstraps’ sleep pattern. The first is to do with external threats. Penguins hatch eggs alone while their partners are away seeking for food. Colonies (领地) are threatened by big birds that’ll steal unattended eggs. Broken sleep is a clever strategy of getting some shut-eye during long egg-guarding periods.   

Penguins with nests near the edge of the colony are at greater risk than those in the centre, but enjoy more extended naps. The second is threats from within, as penguin colonies are noisy, crowded places. They steal nesting materials from careless neighbors, so penguins in the crime-ridden centre find it harder to sleep than those in the safer suburbs.   

Choosing between those theories requires more research. Dr Lee said, “Nor can we measure how restorative such naps are. Chinstraps are evidently able to hatch their young under such conditions, which suggests they’re getting something from their constant nodding-off. So, humans nurturing their newborns should take heart.”

1. Why do dolphins and ducks sleep with only one side of their brains?

A．To enjoy their cake.	B．To establish a nice nest.
C．To be watchful during naps.	D．To obtain high-quality sleep.

2. What does Chinstraps’ sleep pattern feature?

A．Engaging in numerous naps a day.	B．Sleeping nowhere beyond the ocean.
C．Ranging from 4 seconds to 12 hours.	D．Always sleeping with the entire brain.

3. What can be inferred from the explanations in paragraph 3?

A．Penguins live safely in natural colonies.	B．Penguins encounter a variety of challenges.
C．Penguins hatch their eggs away from colony.	D．Penguins at the core of the colony sleep longer.

4. What does Dr Lee think of Chinstraps’ micro-naps?

A．Their duration is hard to detect.	B．They distract the restorative effects.
C．Adopting them aids human newborns.	D．Taking this sleep mode favors penguins.

4 . Last week, Chicago became the first city in the US to join the “Lights Out Plan”. People turned off the lights in the city’s tallest buildings, so that thousands of birds could get to their winter homes. Every year in autumn, some birds fly over Chicago on their way to the south, and come back the next spring.

Lights mean danger to birds. Birds find their way by looking at the stars in the sky. Lights in tall buildings are so bright that birds may mistake them as stars. This means they cannot find the right way to go home.

This month, about 300 types of birds are flying over Chicago to go back to the south to live through the cold winter. Birds fly to warmer places for a few reasons. Many birds cannot live in the cold, so they fly to warmer places. But there are other reasons, too. Birds need to look for food in the south. Another reason is that they want to have baby birds. Many birds like to have their baby birds in the same “house” they lived in last year, so they fly back there.

There are about 9,000 kinds of birds in the world, and about 600 kinds of birds migrate. Some birds can fly a very long way. Sometimes they fly to other countries. We have fewer birds today because there are fewer places for birds.

1. Why did people in Chicago turn off their lights last week?

A．Because people wanted to save money.

B．Because people liked the dark night.

C．Because people were a afraid that birds would make much noise.

D．Because people were a afraid that birds would lose their way.

2. What does the underlined word “migrate” mean in Chinese?

A．move to a new place	B．stay at the same place
C．sleep in winter	D．lay eggs

3. Today we have fewer birds because ________.

A．lots of birds are often ill	B．people kill lots of birds
C．there are fewer places for birds	D．other animals eat them

4. Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A．All birds fly to warmer places every year.

B．Some birds have to fly to warmer places in autumn.

C．Some birds can fly a long way to other countries.

D．About 600 kinds of birds migrate in the world.

5 . Weeds and pests are “garden heroes” according to the Royal Horticultural Society.

The RHS is now encouraging gardeners to welcome weeds instead of considering them enemies. The rebranding(重塑形象)comes just in time for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, held by the RHS. In the show 4 out of 12 of the gardens will include “weed heroes” as an important part, according to Sheila Das, the RHS Wisley garden manager.

“If you’ve got a weed”, says Das, “it’s telling you what’s going on underground. Your weed is your adviser. It’s your friend. So don’t treat weeds as troubles, something growing where they shouldn’t. They are actually plants in the right place”.

Nettles(荨麻草)let a gardener know that the soil is rich in nitrogen, and fat hen, a weed often considered “troublesome”, is a sign that an area is low in nutrients.

Until last year, the RHS published a yearly “pest” list, including snails and slugs. But this year, to be more “biodiversity(生物多样性)positive”, they’ve published a list of the most beneficial wildlife into our garden, and both snails and slugs are making a comeback.

Sheila Das noted our gardens would be a duller place without those unpopular ones. Apart from food for hedgehogs, frogs and birds, slugs and snails are excellent for recycling dead plant and animal waste, helping to keep soil healthy.

These are just the first steps towards the RHS’s goal towards better biodiversity. Sheila Das said, “The RHS has realized the role of gardens in supporting biodiversity and it will no longer call any garden wildlife as ‘pests’. Instead, there will be greater consideration of the role that weeds, slugs, and snails play in a balanced garden eco-system together with more popular wildlife such as birds, hedgehogs and frogs. ”

1. Why does the rebranding come in time for the show?

A．The weeds’ gardens will win.	B．The weed heroes will be known.
C．It will be popular worldwide.	D．It will be an excellent competition.

2. What is Paragraph 3 used for?

A．Giving examples.	B．Introducing a topic.
C．Describing a scene.	D．Making comparison

3. What are gardens like according to Sheila Das?

A．They support a habitat for rich biodiversity.

B．They play a great part in wildlife protection.

C．They contain only popular weeds and insects.

D．They keep a balance between weeds and pests.

4. What is the best title of the text?

A．Pests are good advisers.	B．Weeds make a comeback.
C．Weeds and pests are our friends.	D．Heroes will win the flower show.

6 . For the past four years I had been having up to 30 seizures (癫痫发作) a day. It made me _________ a lot.

Despite _________ visits to hospitals, no doctor could tell me the cause of it. At night, my family had to check on me just in case I wasn’t _________. So I could never be in a room alone and as a 21-year-old young man, I was finding the lack of _________ getting me down.

One day, my friend Kerri asked if I wanted an assistance dog. I knew there were guide dogs for the _________, but I wasn’t sure how a dog could help me. A few days later, Kerri told me she’d done some search and found a company “Dogs For Life”. From the website of the company, I _________ that they teach dogs to smell a chemical change in the body and _________ people when a seizure is about to _________.

Soon after, I _________ Baloo, a dog trained by Dogs For Life. It sat silently in the corner. As I sat down, Baloo suddenly __________ and jumped on me. Minutes later, I had a seizure. It had __________ the chemical changes in my body and tried to warn me. It was by my side until the __________ came. Instantly, I knew it was a good __________ for me, and I took her back home.

It’s __________ my life more than a handful of times and I couldn’t be more __________ for it.

1.

A．think

B．hide

C．suffer

D．learn

2.

A．personal

B．countless

C．formal

D．impressive

3.

A．sleeping

B．working

C．replying

D．breathing

4.

A．warmth

B．fun

C．safety

D．independence

5.

A．deaf

B．blind

C．injured

D．elderly

6.

A．wrote

B．learnt

C．overheard

D．planned

7.

A．warn

B．attract

C．follow

D．hit

8.

A．burn out

B．break in

C．come on

D．drop by

9.

A．saved

B．addressed

C．met

D．invited

10.

A．rose

B．lay

C．struggled

D．played

11.

A．sensed

B．caused

C．touched

D．cried

12.

A．action

B．attack

C．guide

D．help

13.

A．boss

B．teacher

C．partner

D．listener

14.

A．risked

B．stopped

C．kept

D．saved

15.

A．thankful

B．anxious

C．excited

D．patient

7 . In the west of the Greek capital Athens, the fish market of Keratsini is busy early in the morning, with trucks waiting nearby to be loaded with fishes. But on his fishing boat, Arapakis sorts out something different—bottles, boots, plastic pipes and fishing nets, all dragged from the bed of the Aegean Sea.

“We are swimming in plastic,” said Arapakis, whose family has fished for five generations. “By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea,” he said, as recent reports noted.

That morning’s plastic catch weighed “about 100 kilograms,” said the founder of Enaleia, a nonprofit that encourages fishermen to collect marine (海洋的) waste caught in their nets. Since its establishment in 2018, it has worked with more than 1,200 fishermen in Greece to raise concern over the degradation of the marine environment.

Active in 42 ports throughout Greece, Enaleia provides fishermen with large bags for marine waste that they can put in garbage cans once back at port. For every kilogram of plastic they deliver, they receive a small amount of money, which is enough for a drink. Since October, fishing crews have dragged out 20 metric tons of plastic and old fishing equipment each month. Nearly 600 tons have been collected over the last five years. The collected plastic is transported to a recycling plant in the industrial area of Megara near Keratsini, to make new products such as socks, swimwear or furniture.

Arapakis said he went about the cleanup project after a trip to Greece’s Cyclades islands, where he saw fishermen throwing the waste gathered by their nets back into the sea.

Arapakis is convinced there has been a “mentality change” among Greece’s fishermen. “Previously we caught large quantities of plastic, but we only kept the fish. All waste was thrown into the sea,” said Mokharam, team leader on the Arapakis family’s boat. “The project brings practical benefits for fishing boats. In the past, the anchor was often caught by waste, especially nets, and the engine would go out. But now things have changed,” he added.

1. What can we learn about Arapakis from the first 2 paragraphs?

A．He was a successful fish trader.	B．He collected waste from the sea.
C．He liked swimming in the sea.	D．He had a large family to support.

2. What does the underlined word “degradation” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Impact.

B．Worsening.

C．Improvement.

D．Research.

3. What will most probably happen to the collected waste in the end?

A．It will be sold at a high price.	B．It will be exchanged for food.
C．It will be thrown back into the sea.	D．It will be well dealt with for reuse.

4. What can we infer from Mokharam’s words?

A．Fishing is a tough job for fishermen.	B．The sea in Greece is seriously polluted.
C．He thinks highly of the cleanup project.	D．He still feels ashamed for fishermen’s behavior.

8 . It’s most people’s nightmare: surviving a plane crash only to be trapped in a jungle with no way of contacting the outside world. But this was reality for four Colombian children, and in an incredible story, they survived.

The children, aged 13, 9 and 4, as well as an 11-month-old baby, were flying with their mother from their village in the Amazon to visit their father in San José del Guaviare. The single-engine plane on which they were flying experienced engine problems and disappeared on May 1, 2023. Bad weather prevented the army from finding the crash site for two weeks. where they then found the dead bodies of three adults, including the children’s mother.

How did these children survive conditions that would be an unimaginable struggle for most adults? They are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group and were raised in the jungle. As such, they have a better understanding of the rainforest. They know which fruits are safe to eat and which plants should be avoided. Working with, rather than against, the Amazon. they survived off of juan soco (a fruit similar to passion fruit) and seeds, while feeding the baby water mixed with yucca flour that they found on the plane.

While the children got on with the business of surviving, the Colombian army worked with Indigenous volunteers to find them. After 40 days of searching, the children were found and taken to recover at a military hospital in Bogota.

While many around the world have taken this survival story of resilience to be a miracle, others point out that it is the result of an ancient knowledge of the rainforest that has been passed down through Indigenous communities over the generations. Indigenous tribes have a close relationship to the Amazon, marked by a deep respect for the forest that provides them with shelter and sustenance. It is their close connection to and understanding of the rainforest that undoubtedly helped the children to survive.

1. What can we learn about the crash in the first two paragraphs?

A．The plane knocked into another one.

B．The rescue failed to arrive immediately.

C．The mother managed to survive at last.

D．The kids shared a jungle with adults.

2. Why did the kids successfully survive?

A．They kept calm in the plane crash.

B．Enough food was found on the plane.

C．They were familiar with the rainforest.

D．Native volunteers offered food and water.

3. What does the underlined word “resilience” mean in the last paragraph?

A．Toughness.

B．Competition.

C．Evolution.

D．Creation.

4. What does the author suggest from the surviving story?

A．Emergency help should be improved.

B．One who is knowledgeable lives long.

C．We should sharpen children’s living skills.

D．It is worthwhile to be in harmony with nature.

9 . Three cute brown bear cubs who got lost after getting separated from their mother gripped the hearts of netizens.

The fuzzy cubs were spotted by Gelek Gyatso, an ecological protection officer, when he was patrolling a riverbed at an altitude of nearly 4, 500 meters in Qumarleb county in Qinghai province’s Yushu.

The little cubs eagerly ran toward the ranger on the snow-covered riverbed, then stopped short at a safe distance to stare at him curiously. After realizing that the man was not their mother, the bear cubs turned around and ran along the river calling for mom.

This was Gelek Gyatso’s first encounter with bear cubs separated from their mother. With his knowledge of wild animals, he drove the cubs towards an area near their cave in the hope of a safe reunion. Thankfully, later that day, other patrol officers found that the mother bear had reunited with her cubs and that the family was happy and healthy.

This year marks Gelek Gyatso’s tenth year as an ecological protection officer. He patrols the area every day, diligently records the animals he sees, carefully checks on the vegetation, and helps clean up litter.

Over the decade, Gelek Gyatso has witnessed great changes in the ecological environment of his hometown. There has been an increase in the number of wild animals, and everyone is participating in the protection of these species, making coexistence between humans and animals more harmonious.

He also reminds people that if they encounter wild animals in the wild, they should keep their distance, not disturbing or feeding them, and that if they find an animal that needs to be rescued, they should call the fire or forest department in time.

1. What happened to the three bear cubs?

A．Losing track of the mother bear.

B．Following Gelek with curiosity.

C．Mistaking a man for their mother.

D．Being trapped in the cold riverbed.

2. Which of the following best describes Gelek?

A．Ambitious.

B．Romantic.

C．Devoted.

D．Innovative.

3. According to Gelek, what should people do to live in harmony with wildlife?

A．Changing their living surroundings.

B．Feeding and sheltering wild animals.

C．Getting involved in saving endangered species.

D．Seeking professional help to rescue those in need.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．A project of wildlife conservation

B．A journey of friendship connection

C．A knowledgeable ecological officer

D．An encounter leading to a safe reunion

10 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. Why has the lake become famous in recent years?

A．It’s introduced in books.

B．A sports game is held there.

C．A singer sings a song about it.

2. Where did the journey start?

A．On the eastern shore.

B．On the frozen surface.

C．From above the lake.

3. What attracts runners to the lake?

A．The wide space.

B．The beautiful landscape.

C．The cold weather.

4. What does the speaker mainly talk about?

A．Extreme weather in Siberia.

B．The best time to visit Lake Baikal.

C．The loneliest marathon in the world.