1 . As cities balloon with growth, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find. If you’re lucky, there might be a pocket park near where you live, but it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild.

Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but a new study shows that wildness in urban areas is extremely important for human well-being.

The research team focused on a large urban park. They surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in the park. The researchers then examined these submissions, coding (编码) experiences into different categories. For example, one participant’s experience of “We sat and listened to the waves at the beach for a while” was assigned the categories “sitting at beach” and “listening to waves.”

Across the 320 submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After the coding of all submissions, half a dozen categories were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, and following an established trail.

Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which helps people recognize and take part in the activities that are most satisfying and meaningful to them. For example, the experience of walking along the edge of water might be satisfying for a young professional on a weekend hike in the park. Back downtown during a workday, they can enjoy a more domestic form of this interaction by walking along a fountain on their lunch break.

“We’re trying to generate a language that helps bring the human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so that we can interact with it,” said Peter Kahn, a senior author of the study.

1. What phenomenon does the author describe at the beginning of the text?

A．Pocket parks are now popular.	B．Wild nature is hard to find in cities.
C．Many cities are overpopulated.	D．People enjoy living close to nature.

2. Why did the researchers code participant submissions into categories?

A．To compare different types of park-goers.	B．To explain why the park attracts tourists.
C．To analyze the main features of the park.	D．To find patterns in the visitors’ summaries.

3. What can we learn from the example given in paragraph 5?

A．Walking is the best way to gain access to nature.

B．Young people are too busy to interact with nature.

C．The same nature experience takes different forms.

D．The nature language enhances work performance.

4. What should be done before we can interact with nature according to Kahn?

A．Language study.	B．Environmental conservation.
C．Public education.	D．Intercultural communication.

2 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.

1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?

A．Beautifying the city he lives in.	B．Introducing eco-friendly products.
C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste.	D．Reducing garbage on the beach.

2. Why does the author discuss plastic straws in paragraph 3?

A．To show the difficulty of their recycling.

B．To explain why they are useful.

C．To voice his views on modern art.

D．To find a substitute for them.

3. What effect would “Truckload of Plastic” have on viewers?

A．Calming.	B．Disturbing.
C．Refreshing.	D．Challenging.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety

B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art

C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies

D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures

5 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

My husband and I enjoy seeing life through the eyes of our children. It’s amazing to watch as they discover their world.

While we were outdoors last summer enjoying the sunshine, our oldest daughter, Kaytlin, called me to the doorway. Beneath the steps was a baby red squirrel.

We watched it from a distance, not wanting to disturb it or scare off its mother. But after a long wait—and looking all around our house for signs of a nest or a mother—we realized the tiny squirrel was lost.

Shaking terribly, he was weak, thin, and hungry. We tried to find an expert to help, but the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife website showed that there were no wildlife experts in our area. After some quick research, we concluded that the best way to give the squirrel a fighting chance was to care for him ourselves. So a trip to the local store for milk and supplies was in order. More research taught us how much to feed him, how to estimate his age, how and when to wean (断奶) him, and that we should let him go as soon as he could survive on his own.

Our daughters and I took turns in feeding “Squirt.” Kaytlin took on the most responsibility. She taught him to eat from a bottle, and she woke in the night for his feeds.

To our relief, Squirt soon became healthy and strong. Within a few weeks he became more active. He would chatter (吱吱叫) for his next meal, playfully go around the girls, and lie down on them for sleep. It wasn’t long before he was weaned onto solid food and reintroduced to the wild.

His first few visits to the great outdoors were funny. Just like a child, he would play in the grass some and then run back to Kaytlin for safety. Soon she had him climbing trees and finding nest material.

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。

One day in the trees, Squirt met up with a family of gray squirrels.

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One night, Squirt didn’t come back to our house and it rained hard.

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6 . There has been a very serious decline in the numbers of shallow-water fish as a result of overfishing. People still want to eat fish, so the fishing industry must look at other sources, especially the deep waters of the Atlantic.     1    

Conservation measures will have to be put in place if these deep-sea fish are to survive. Research on five such species shows that numbers have declined by between 87 percent and 98 percent.     2     Many species could well disappear completely if the present trend continues. These are species that have been swimming in our oceans for hundreds of millions of years.

The problem is emphasized by the fact that the decline in numbers happened in less than twenty years. Deep-sea fish take a long time to reproduce and normally live for many years.     3     The average size of such fish also declined, with one species showing a 57 percent decline in average size. This is of particular concern, as large fish tend to produce more offspring than small ones.

    4     The deep-sea species have been caught as if they were the fast-breeding (快速繁殖) fish like sardine and herring. It is like killing elephants as if they reproduced at the same rate as rabbits.

The damage done by overfishing goes beyond the sea environment. Millions of people make a living in the fishing industry.     5     Measures must be taken to not only conserve ecosystems, but also sustain livelihoods and ensure food security.

A．Billions of people rely on fish for protein.

B．Many people now choose not to eat deep-sea fish.

C．Unfortunately, their reproduction rate is very low.

D．This puts them in the category of “critically endangered”.

E．None of these facts has been taken into account by the fishing industry.

F．Overfishing is a major cause of decline in populations of ocean wildlife.

G．This has resulted in a sharp decline in the numbers of many of the species caught.

7 . For years, David James, who studies insects at Washington State University, had wanted to examine the migration (迁徙)patterns of West Coast monarch butterflies (黑脉金斑蝶). The route the butterflies travel has been hardly known because the populations are too small to follow. For every 200 monarchs tagged (打标签)by a researcher, only one is usually recovered at the end of its trip, James says, and finding even 200 in the wild to tag is unlikely. Knowing the route is vital to conservation efforts, but James had no way to figure it out- until he got a phone call from Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

The prison was looking for new activities to improve the mental health of those serving long-term sentences. So James began working with prisoners to raise monarchs through the whole process of their transformation. The adult insects were then tagged and released from the prison. Over five years, nearly 10, 000 monarchs flew from the facility. Elsewhere in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, researchers released another few thousand.

The tags included email addresses, and soon after the first butterflies took off, James started receiving messages from people who had spotted them. The butterflies, the reports confirmed, wintered in coastal California. Twelve of them landed at Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. Several more headed to Bolinas and Morro Bay.

The work helps researchers identify ideal places to plant milkweed and other vegetation that are important to the life cycle of West Coast monarch butterflies. It also brought out the gentler side of some of the prisoners. “They were very worried that they were going to harm the butterflies, ”James says. Watching the monarch change their form also touched the men. “This butterfly changed, ” James recalls prisoners telling him, “and maybe we can too. ”

1. What was hard for David to do in his study?

A．Gain financial support.	B．Hire qualified workers.
C．Build a new laboratory.	D．Find enough monarchs.

2. Why are the butterflies tagged before being released?

A．To guarantee their safety.

B．To enable them to fly longer distances.

C．To track their travel routes.

D．To distinguish them from other species.

3. What makes the prisoners feel that they can change?

A．The patience the butterflies showed.

B．The hardship the butterflies underwent.

C．The transformation of the butterflies.

D．The devotion of James to the butterflies.

4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．The impact of the research.

B．The findings of James’ study.

C．The release of the prisoners.

D．The life cycle of the butterflies.