“I’m going to miss you so much, Poppy,” said the tall, thin teenager. He bent down to hug his old friend goodbye. He stood up, hugged his parents, and smiled, trying not to let his emotions(情绪) get the better of him.
His parents were not quite able to keep theirs under control. They had driven their son several hours out of town to the university where he would soon be living and studying. It was time to say goodbye for now at least. The family hugged and smiled through misty eyes and then laughed.
The boy lifted the last bag onto his shoulder, and flashed a bright smile. “I guess this is it,” he said. “I’ll see you back home in a month, okay?” His parents nodded, and they watched as he walked out of sight into the crowds of hundreds of students and parents. The boy’s mother turned to the dog, “Okay, Poppy, time to go back home.”
The house seemed quiet as a tomb without the boy living there. All that week, Poppy didn’t seem interested in her dinner, her favourite toy, or even in her daily walk. Her owners were sad too, but they knew their son would be back to visit. Poppy didn’t.
They offered the dog some of her favourite peanut butter treats. They even let her sit on the sofa, but the old girl just wasn’t her usual cheerful self. Her owners started to get worried. “What should we do to cheer Poppy up?” asked Dad. “We’ve tried everything.”
“I have an idea, but it might be a little crazy,” smiled Mum. “Without anybody left in the house but us, this place could use a bit of fun. Let’s get a little dog for Poppy.”
It didn’t take long before they walked through the front door carrying a big box. Poppy welcomed them home as usual but when she saw the box, she stopped. She put her nose on it. Her tail began wagging(摆动) ever so slowly, then faster as she caught the smell.
Paragraph 1:Dad put the box on the ground and opened the top.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2:
A few weeks later, the boy arrived home from university.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . Government agencies and volunteer groups in many places are using sea creatures to protect coastal areas from storms and rising sea levels. The idea is that large groups of oysters (牡蛎) known as colonies, can help reduce the power of waves. Powerful waves can damage lands along the edge of ocean waters.
Oysters may play an important part in dealing with the problem. Oysters are central to a project that is taking place near Vaccaro’s rebuilt house. The project is being carried out by the Littore Society. It received $1 million from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The group has been building steel wire containers, filling them with rocks and whelk (海螺) shells an positioning them along the shoreline of Barnegat Bay.
Tiny baby oysters are attached to whelk shells and placed in the existing cages to further strengthen the shoreline. The shoreline in Vaccaro’s neighborhood has lost 46 meters of beach since 1995, the Littoral Society says.
The oysters appear to be doing their job. One recent day, a strong east wind blew across the bay. But between the oysters and the shoreline, the water was much calmer, and waves gently wen onto the shoreline instead of hitting it with force.
As an added benefit, the oysters help improve water quality in the bay. The Associated Press reports that a single oyster can filter (过滤) up to 190 liters of water a day.
A few kilometers south, a group called ReClam the Bay is building an oyster reef to protect the shoreline of Mordecai Island. People do not live on the island, but it protects the shoreline of Beach Haven, a town on Long Beach Island.
Volunteers fill bags with 16 kilograms of whelk shells, to which millions of baby oysters have been attached. Then volunteers move them out to the reef a few hundred yards into the ocean. They have placed 10, 000 bags of oysters and whelk shells there since 2015.
1. Where do the baby oysters grow?| A．On the sea rocks. | B．In steel wire cages. |
| C．In shallow calm water. | D．In the fishermen’s houses. |
| A．The sea life project works. | B．The baby oysters grow well. |
| C．The beach stops missing. | D．The sea pollution is dropping. |
| A．It cooperates with the Littoral Society. |
| B．It offers baby oysters to the Littoral Society. |
| C．It has the same aim as the Littoral Society. |
| D．It has made more progress than the Littoral Society. |
| A．Oyster Farming Has Great Benefits |
| B．Volunteer Ocean Protection Is in Action |
| C．Worldwide Beaches Are Disappearing Fast |
| D．Little Sea Creature Could Save Coastal Land |
3 . Giving Tuesday is the perfect time for you to help out some pets in need. And we have a few ideas.
By design, Giving Tuesday arrives the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and is a perfect time to give to those less fortunate. That includes dogs, thousands of whom will be spending the holidays in shelters rather than loving homes. For a few dollars, you can make their stay a little easier.
Here are several ways you can contribute to animal welfare on Giving Tuesday.
Your Local Animal Shelter
This is the best way to see an immediate impact while keeping dollars in your area. Shelters almost certainly could use your help. If you can’t adopt a pet or donate some time, a money gift is the next best option.
Find your local rescue’s website or social media profile and see if they have a page where you can donate. You can also check and see if the organization has a wish list you can view. Then you can buy something you’re sure they need.
Organizations Affected By Natural Disasters
2022 was yet another year full of natural disasters, whether it’s flooding, hurricanes, or fires. Through it all, shelters and rescues keep caring for their dogs and cats, keeping them safe and healthy.
Then comes the aftermath (余波). Shelters still have to care for many lost or homeless pets—numbers that often increase after disasters—as their communities clean up and rebuild. There’s no pause as their jobs get harder. If you know of an animal welfare organization affected by a disaster this year—natural or otherwise—they could use some help.
Plenty More Giving Opportunities
There is no shortage of places to donate on Giving Tuesday, so if you’re still unsure on where to direct your generosity—or, hopefully, willing to give to a few organizations—here are even more ideas.
Canine Cellmates, a program that aims to train dogs to be adoptable
America’s VetDogs, which partners service dogs with veterans (老兵)
Best Friends Society, an organization dedicated to avoiding the euthanisation (使安乐死) of shelter dogs
Biscuits and Bones, which organizes dog food donations
There are hundreds of other worthy organizations not listed here, so research your own area and give somewhere close to your heart.
1. Which of the following is the best way to help your local animal shelter?| A．Donating money | B．Volunteering |
| C．Providing animals | D．Saving dollars |
| A．It is hard to clean up | B．They are easily damaged |
| C．Pets tend to become unhealthy | D．They have more animals to deal with |
| A．Best Friends Society |
| B．America’s VetDogs |
| C．Canine Cellmates |
| D．Biscuits and Bones |
4 . On the day the tornado hit, there was no sign that the fierce weather was on its way —the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first warning my husband, Jimmy, 67, and I, 65, got came around 9 p.m., from some text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our third-floor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the national television to our local Pensacola, Florida, station.
Soon the tornado was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard. The house shook, and the power went out. And the wind began to roar (咆哮) through the house, most likely through windows and the door to our garage. Everything was moving. And the back wall of the house came off and flew into the darkness outside. We had three flights of steps to get to the storeroom down there, the relative safety of the first floor.
I didn't know how or if we would make it down the steps. It felt as if there was no floor as the wind lifted me off my feet. As we finally reached the last flight of steps, our front door blew open. Suddenly, a three-foot-long tree branch (树枝) flew over our heads, missing us by inches.
By the time I reached the storeroom, the tornado had been over us for about a minute, Jimmy pushed me down to the storeroom floor, but he couldn't get inside himself because of the wind. I held Jimmy's arm as the tornado blew the door open. My knees were full of glass, but I felt no pain. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out of the house.
All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn't believe it was over. Our neighbor said the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Luckily, none of us were seriously injured.
1. Where did the couple learn about the coming fierce weather?| A．From the dark sky. |
| B．From the radio station. |
| C．From the news report on TV. |
| D．From the text sent by their neighbors. |
| A．They had no place to hide. |
| B．They tried to get out of the house. |
| C．Their garage was blown into pieces. |
| D．Their house was badly destroyed. |
| A．He was in great danger. |
| B．He flew out of the house. |
| C．He was seriously injured. |
| D．He got inside the storeroom. |
| A．The tornado hitting Florida |
| B．A couple stopping a disaster |
| C．The wind roaring through the house |
| D．A couple keeping alive from a disaster |
Little Rat
Little Rat was not a rat. She was a girl of seven, but most neighbours thought she was only four. People called her by that because her skin was too dark. In the early 1900s, life was rather tough for a kid without parents. She was often teased with questions like, “Who is your father? Where is your mother?”
One night Little Rat lay down on her bed after a day’s heavy work. She was about to fall into sleep when she saw a rat slipping out of a hole in the wall. “A little rat!” she screamed, which scared the rat to escape away.
Lying down, however, somehow the girl couldn’t sleep any more. “It’s good that I’m not alone here,” she thought. She slipped down from the bed, tiptoed a few steps away, and looked at the hole. Again, the rat ran out, shook off the dust from his furs and smelled around with his little wet nose. At last he found a chicken bone on the floor. The rat picked up the bone with his swift paws and began to bite it greedily.
“He must be very hungry,” the girl thought. The idea made her feel hungry, too. Carefully she took a small piece of bread out of her pocket and threw some onto the floor before the little rat. Seeing no threat from the human before him, the animal reached the bread and all of a sudden he forgot all possible dangers and snatched the bread.
So day after day the girl kept company with the little rat. She fed him with the little food she had, and the rat would eat out of her hand. The girl was beaten by her aunt more often than before, because she always seemed eager to run back to her little room after doing the washing in the evening.
One morning the girl was carrying a barrel of water to her aunt’s garden. Suddenly she heard a sharp cry from the kitchen. It was her aunt. “Rat! A rat!” she screamed. Then the girl heard the woman chasing the rat in the kitchen.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“My little rat!” the idea occurred to the girl.
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The girl watched the neighbours gathering at the door and was frightened.
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6 . I noticed two male bluebirds. They appeared to be helping a female with a group of newly-born birds. I wanted to know if one of the males was an invader (入侵者). This is the fun of bird watching — you never know when you’ll find something exciting and unusual.
Like 90% of the bird world, one male bluebird pairs with only one female, and together they raise a family. But sometimes a third adult shows up and helps the pair raise the young. Often it is a relative. The most likely reasons a lone bluebird becomes a “helper bird” are that it either has lost its mate (配偶) or failed to get one during the mating season.
Both the mated pair and the helper get some advantages when helping happens. Every time the helper brings food to the nest (巢), one of the parents is free to take care of its own needs for a few minutes. Helpers also protect the nest by driving away possible enemies. The helper’s gain is less direct but equally valuable. He or she (helpers can be male or female) learns how to be a parent. Though raising babies is natural, skilled parents usually are more successful.
The Florida scrub jay is a kind of bird living in the U.S. state of Florida. Many pairs of Florida scrub jays “have” one to six helpers. Usually the helpers are older children, and they do their job very well. Nests with helpers have 50% more young than nests without helpers (about half the jays don’t use helpers). Helping in scrub jays seems related to a shortage of nesting habitats. Young jays must wait for older birds to die to get a nest. During the time, they help raise their younger brothers and sisters.
1. Why may a bluebird be a helper for other bird pairs?| A．It has no mate of its own. |
| B．It wants to be a parent itself. |
| C．It wants to live in others’ nests. |
| D．It is good at raising baby birds. |
| A．Practicing building nests. |
| B．Being an experienced parent. |
| C．Having its own needs satisfied. |
| D．Finding a mate as soon as possible. |
| A．Florida scrub jays are an endangered species. |
| B．Some Florida scrub jays will die without a nest. |
| C．Florida scrub jays need great help from humans. |
| D．More young Florida scrub jays survive with helpers. |
| A．Bluebirds share nests. |
| B．Animals are human-like. |
| C．Helper birds feed and raise young of others. |
| D．Bird watching brings people close to nature. |
7 . In the animal world, speed is king. Fast animals have a leg up in outrunning other animals, which puts them high on the food chain. It would seem that all animals would go for speed, but then there’s the sloth (树懒). While a lion can go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in only five seconds, it takes a sloth all day to cover no more than 50 meters.
Sloths live entirely in trees on a diet of leaves. And for this, they are extremely rare. While most of the land world is covered in trees, there are very few vertebrates (脊椎动物) that call the tree home. The aim of a 2016 study, says Jonathan Pauli, a University of Alabama professor of forest and wildlife ecology, was to help uncover why sloths are indeed so unique. “Among vertebrates, this is the rarest of lifestyles”, says Pauli. “When you picture animals that live off plant leaves, they are almost all big-things like deer. What’s super interesting about sloths is that they can’t be big.”
For their research, Pauli and his Wisconsin team studied wild sloths at a field site. When the researchers measured the energy use of sloths, they found a wildly low burning of as little as 110 calories of energy a day. And for this, they take the cake: it is the lowest measured energetic output for any mammal (哺乳动物).
“The measurement was intended to find out what it cost sloths to live over a day,”says Pauli, who adds that a diet of little but leaves lacks nutritional value and the animal’s small size doesn’t allow for overeating-so sloths need to find ways to make the most of their diets, which means using tiny amounts of energy, dramatic control of body temperature and living at an extremely slow pace.
Their reward? A wonderfully widespread ecological system to call their own, one slow inch at a time.
1. Why is a lion mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．To admire lions’ speed. | B．To state sloths’ weakness. |
| C．To confirm lions’ lead position. | D．To highlight sloths’ uniqueness. |
| A．The lifestyle of sloths. | B．The diet of vertebrates. |
| C．The species of rare animals. | D．The energy use of creatures. |
| A．Break down. | B．Keep on. | C．Stand out. | D．Grow up. |
| A．Their slow pace is a balanced choice. |
| B．They are in face of possible extinction. |
| C．Their slow pace decides a tiny appetite. |
| D．They suffer a lot against natural enemies. |
8 . Begun 30 years ago, the Kubuqi desert greening project has succeeded in not only controlling the fast growth of the seventh-largest desert in China, about the size of Kuwait, but also turning about 6, 000 square kilometers of the desert — one-third of it — green.
The desert lies about 800 kilometers to the west of Beijing in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region (自治区) and the greening efforts have also controlled desertification (沙漠化) in the rest of the area.
The project, which began about 30 years ago, can be looked to as an example of efforts to advance green development, in order to create harmony between humans and nature, and leave a better environment for future generations.
The success of the project, which has been praised by the UN Environment Programme as an “eco-pioneer”, sets an example for successful desertification control and ecosystem improvement based on effective government policies, supported by investment (投资) in the eco industry and combined with the efforts of local farmers. These three aspects are key to the success of the “Kubuqi model”.
Elion, a private ecology (生态) and investment company, has invested about 38 billion yuan($5. 82 billion)in the Kubuqi desert-greening project since 1988 helping to lift about 102, 000 local farmers out of poverty. For example, the locals grow a drought-tolerant (耐旱) plant, Chinese licorice, which is the most used herb in traditional Chinese medicine. The plant helps enrich the desert soil, with the bacteria around the roots of the plants producing nitrogen (氮气). Besides, Cistanche, another type of drought-tolerant herb, was introduced after the successful planting of licorice. Under the company’s guidance and with the local government’s support, the local people benefit from the “environmental wealth”.
More companies should be encouraged to apply the “Kubuqi model” in other desert control projects in Inner Mongolia and neighboring Gansu province, where the climate conditions are similar but not quite the same, so as to further gain experience and enrich the model in practice. Showing it can be successfully applied in other areas will help promote the model worldwide.
1. What do we know about the Kubuqi greening project?| A．It increases the areas of desert. |
| B．It has turned all of the desert green. |
| C．It has achieved satisfying results. |
| D．It is applied all over the world. |
| A．Efforts of local farmers. |
| B．Government policies’ support. |
| C．Investment in the eco-industry. |
| D．Help from the UN Environment Programme. |
| A．Negative. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Indifferent. |
9 . When much of the world shut down due to the COVID-19, a family of four decided to bring home a group of backyard chickens. The
She fell in love with the baby chicks the very moment they came home. Sophie
The six chicks served as a
Sophie managed to enjoy the outdoors with the chickens, including
“Her chickens are teaching her about
| A．reality | B．intention | C．routine | D．permission |
| A．provide | B．occupy | C．connect | D．impress |
| A．break | B．form | C．switch | D．recover |
| A．wasted | B．lost | C．produced | D．spent |
| A．holding | B．delivering | C．making | D．sharing |
| A．amazed | B．upset | C．curious | D．embarrassed |
| A．joy | B．barrier | C．schedule | D．fashion |
| A．returned | B．failed | C．hesitated | D．continued |
| A．secretly | B．conveniently | C．safely | D．normally |
| A．selling | B．raising | C．resting | D．shooting |
| A．dressed up | B．showed off | C．carried on | D．checked out |
| A．dream | B．identity | C．relationship | D．thought |
| A．honesty | B．love | C．challenge | D．success |
| A．suddenly | B．immediately | C．merely | D．eventually |
| A．confident | B．responsible | C．grateful | D．reliable |
10 . This is Poot Poot, the white Nigerian Dwarf goat that surprises us all. Poot Poot was born last March and was the
My ten-year-old daughter,Atlas,and I
Poot Poot wasn't the first goat we'd had to
Atlas, too, had been early born,
| A．smartest | B．cutest | C．tiniest | D．shortest |
| A．make | B．approach | C．leave | D．take |
| A．work | B．freeze | C．show | D．drop |
| A．stayed up | B．walked around | C．made up | D．sat around |
| A．breathe | B．jump | C．scream | D．nurse |
| A．record | B．measure | C．raise | D．keep |
| A．angry | B．wet | C．injured | D．warm |
| A．buy | B．discover | C．bring | D．train |
| A．Since | B．Though | C．If | D．Unless |
| A．usually | B．nearly | C．mostly | D．hardly |
| A．weighing | B．lifting | C．carrying | D．keeping |
| A．dreamt | B．predicted | C．concluded | D．thought |
| A．gives way | B．comes over | C．looks up | D．makes faces |
| A．hide | B．greet | C．wait | D．play |
| A．confidence | B．joy | C．honor | D．convenience |
