1 . 2021 is the Year of the Ox according to Chinese zodiac. In China you will find various ox figures made of gold, wood, plastic, paper, shell and stone on sale in stores and on streets to celebrate the return.     1    

Centuries ago, most people earned their living through farming. For example, the ox was used to help plow, cultivate and carry heavy goods. Besides, the ox has long had a significant place in Chinese culture.     2     In the Classic of Poetry, the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, the animal was mentioned in nine out of the 305 pieces.

    3     To this day, the phrase “the spirit of ox” still refers to conquering anything that may present itself as an obstacle.     4     When someone achieves a great accomplishment through hard work, people often use “niu”, meaning “awesome”, to describe him or her.

Oxen seldom bully the weak or fear the strong.     5     This is reflected in a couplet from a poem by Lu Xun (1881—1936): “Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers; Head bowed, like a willing ox I serve the children”, which fully expresses the poet’s loyalty to the people.

A．They work hard and make sacrifices.

B．They never seek to be the center of attention and do not look for praise.

C．The spirit is highly praised and many people follow it as their work ethic.

D．Ancient Chinese poets and writers frequently described the ox in literature.

E．But why was the ox chosen to be one of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs?

F．The ox is considered a symbol of diligence and earnestness (认真) in Chinese culture.

G．Those who were born in the Year of the Ox are often expected to be hardworking.

4 . We all know that regular exercise is very important for both a healthy mind and body. Research has shown that just five minutes of exercise in a "green space" can help people to keep mentally healthy.

Let's take a look at some ways to get close to nature and make them a part of your regular exercise routine(常规).

Get on your bike. Cycling is a cheap, easy and fun way to get some good exercise in the outdoors. Try leaving your car at home and cycling to work one day, if that's possible. Check out the local cycle paths before you go, and plan a safe route. Make sure you take some healthy snacks with you to keep your energy levels up.

Try some outdoor yoga(瑜伽). Practicing yoga can be great for reducing anxiety and aiding relaxation. Yoga is great for stretching(伸展)tight muscles and increasing flexibility as well as improving mobility(活动性), control and breathing. Why not finish your practice with some quiet meditation(冥想) to further calm the mind?

Go running. Instead of spending hours on the treadmill(跑步机), grab a friend and go off for a jog (慢跑)around your local park, or some nature paths. If you are used to running on a treadmill, you may find it harder at first, so, make sure you have some good, supportive running shoes.

1. What should you do if you want to cycle in the outdoors?

A．Checking the bikes.	B．Making good preparations.
C．Learning survival skills.	D．Having a healthy body.

2. Which of the following is not the advantage of trying some outdoor yoga according to the passage?

A．Losing weight.	B．Increasing physical flexibility.
C．Keeping active and energetic.	D．Feeling relaxed or peaceful.

3. What problem do some people have if they want to run on a treadmill?

A．It leads them to fall behind their friends.

B．It needs some patience to continue.

C．It takes them some time to get used to it.

D．It makes them lose interest in running.

4. What does the passage mainly tell us?

A．The process of outdoor sports.	B．The ways of regular exercise.
C．The choices of joining groups.	D．The benefits of green exercise.

5 . 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。

California burns every year, but 2020 is the worst year yet. In a study, more than 77,600 fires    1    (burn) over 2.5 million acres of land so far this year. Unfortunately, the season still has months to run. Over the past decade, the state has spent    2    average of $ 3.7 billion a year    3    (fight)fires. Although smaller than this year's, the 2018 fire season was    4    (particular) destructive, killing 100 people and burning tens of thousands of buildings.

The reason for the burs is a double hit of climate change and development. Pricy housing has pushed people onto    5    (cheap) land close to the wilderness. Meanwhile, climate change is extending the dry season, which stores up fuel for fires.

So    6    can be done to prevent the spread of burns? Clever designs can help make buildings fight against fires that spread 10 neighboring buildings.    7    (material) such as concrete, adobe or stucco are a better bet than walls in a flammable wood, some of    8    promise to hold back the flames for two hours or more. Besides, opening agricultural lands can be a useful measure, too. Australia, which also suffers    9    wildfires, has experimented with bunkers (掩体) specially    10    (design) to hold back fires for an hour or more.

6 . 假定你是校学生会主席，请以学生会的名义就全球变暖问题写一封英文倡议信，并刊登在你校英文报上。内容包括:
1. 全球变暖的负面影响；
2. 如何从我做起减缓全球变暖。
注意:1. 词数100左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear teachers and fellow students,
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Student Union

7 . Global warming does more than just kill plant species — it also changes the way plants grow. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle — Wittenberg(MLU) joined forces with the Leibniz Institute for Plant Biochemistry(IPB) to discover the molecular (分子) process of plant growth. In Current Biology, a scientific journal, they presented their findings on high-temperature plant growth. This could lead to developing plants that can survive global warming.

Plants react to even small temperature changes, but they are unable to move to new locations. “When temperatures rise, plants grow taller ... to cool themselves off. Their stems become taller, and their leaves become narrower and grow farther apart. Yet, this makes the plant more unstable overall,” explains Professor Marcel Quint, an agricultural scientist at MLU. Unstable plants bend faster in the rain and produce less food that’s also less nutritious.

There’s still lots to learn about plant reactions to temperatures. “We are just starting to understand how plants feel the changes in temperature ...,” Quint says. Earlier studies have shown that the protein (蛋白质) PIF4 directly controls plant growth and is also dependent on temperature. When it’s cold, PIF4 is less active, meaning the plant doesn’t grow. At higher temperatures, PIF4 activates growth-promoting genes, and the plant grows taller. This is new information, says Quint.

To understand it, they studied the growth of thale cress (拟南芥) seedlings. Normally, its seedlings form short stems at 20℃. These stems become much longer at 28℃. They discovered a hormone (荷尔蒙) that activates the PIF4 at high temperatures, thus producing the protein.

The findings may help to develop plants that remain stable even at high temperatures and produce many crops.

1. Why did the researchers at MLU and IPB conduct their research?

A．To study the negative effects of global warming.

B．To find out how plants help reduce global warming.

C．To observe how global warming affects plant growth.

D．To understand the ways that plants cause global warming.

2. What can we learn from Paragraph 2?

A．Low temperatures have little impact on plants.

B．Plants prefer dry weather to rainy weather.

C．Plants are very sensitive to change in soil.

D．High temperatures reduce crop production.

3. What do we know about PIF4?

A．It mainly exists in thale cress seedlings.

B．It works differently at different temperatures.

C．It is a kind of gene that controls plant growth.

D．It is a plant hormone that works at high temperatures.

4. Who will probably benefit most from the findings?

A．Farmers.	B．Teachers.
C．Researchers.	D．Environmentalists.

8 . The New South Wales government used planes to drop more than 4,000 pounds of carrots and sweet potatoes, to the forests which are damaged by the recent wildfires. The fires are reported to have killed more than a billion wild animals and destroyed a land of more than 84 thousand square kilometers—about twice the size of Maryland. What is worse, most Australians are worrying about when the wildfires will be fully put out.

“The home of several important wallabies (沙袋鼠) was burnt in the recent fires,” New South Wales Environment Minister Matt Kean said on Sunday. Kean said the drops are what wallabies need. The plan is designed to help wallabies and allow them to recover.

Fire seasons often take place in the country, but this year the fires have been quite devastating. The country experienced one of its hottest and driest years, which made it harder to put out the fires. Besides wild animals, the fires have taken the lives of at least 25 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

“I think there’s nothing to compare with the damage that’s going on over such a large area so quickly. It’s a big event in terms of geography and the number of wild animals,” Dickman, an animal protection expert, said in an interview with NPR last week.

“We know that the number of Australian wild animals has been going down over the last several decades, and it’s probably fairly well known that Australia’s got the world’s highest rate of extinction of animals,” he added. “It’s events like this that may increase the speed of extinction of a lot of other animals. So, it’s very sad time. Everyone has to try their best to do something for them.”

1. Why did the Australian government drop potatoes?

A．To feed the animals.	B．To trap the animals.
C．To plant potatoes there.	D．To help the people.

2. What does the underlined word “devastating” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Damaging.	B．Interesting.
C．Surprising.	D．Tiring.

3. What can we know about the recent Australian wildfires from the text?

A．They have been under control.

B．The weather is helpful in putting out them.

C．They have killed a small amount of wildlife.

D．They have greatly influenced both people and animals.

4. What does Dickman want to stress in the last paragraph?

A．Australia has a lot of wildlife.

B．Australians have suffered a lot.

C．Australians should protect the wildlife.

D．The government is responsible for the wildfires.

9 . Last year, the bushfires in Australia burned more than 12.35 million acres of land. At least 25 people were killed and 2000 homes destroyed. According to the BBC, that was the most casualties(伤亡) from wildfires in the country since 2009. The University of Sydney estimates that 480 million animals have died in South Wales alone.

Zeke Hausfather, an energy systems analyst and climate researcher at Berkeley Earth, said warmer temperatures and extreme weather made Australia more susceptible to fires and increased the length of the fire season. "The drier conditions combined with record high temperatures in 2019 created main conditions for the disastrous fires. Australia's fires were worsened by the combination of those two. 2019 was the perfect storm for being the warmest year on record for Australia and the driest year on record for Australia," Hausfather added on Friday.

Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said warmer ocean temperatures are also contributed to more variable weather around the world. Trenberth believes that global warming contributed to energy imbalances and hot spots in the oceans, which can create a wave in the atmosphere that locks weather patterns in places, causing longer rain events in Indonesia, for example, and at the same time contributing to drought in Australia. He said that once an area experiences drought conditions for two months or more, it increases the risk of fires catching and spreading. Those changing weather patterns due to global warming make drought events longer.

Climate experts stress that climate change is not the only factor in the severity(严重) of wildfires. How land is managed can also impact the amount of fuel available for fires. Practices like controlled bums and other factors can impact the risk to people and property, such as warning systems and the type of development in a given area. Changing those policies has great potential to limit future damage from wildfires along with changes to how fire management resources are dispatched(派遣).

1. What are the numbers about in paragraph 1?

A．The causes of Australian fires.	B．The results of Australian fires.
C．The damaged areas of Australian fires.	D．The property destruction of Australian fires.

2. Which of the following best explains ''susceptible to" in the second paragraph?

A．Very quickly to adapt to.

B．Very seriously to focus on.

C．Very likely to be influenced by.

D．Very easily to be protected against.

3. What can we infer from Trenberth’s research?

A．Longer dry weather contributes to global warming.

B．Global wanning is also a main cause of the bushfires.

C．Warmer ocean temperatures leads to the fires directly.

D．The imbalanced energy leads to the temperature rising.

4. What does the author intend to do in the last paragraph?

A．To stress the effects of Australia fires.

B．To show the methods for land management.

C．To predict the seriousness of Australia fires.

D．To provide some advice about reducing fire damage.

10 . Even though they're not the most exciting things in the world, plants have fascinated us ever since the days of early humans. They may not do any tricks or greet us when we come home at night like a dog would, but that doesn't mean they're any less interesting than animals.

However, just when we thought we knew everything we could about them, a recent study found that plants may possess a secret ability that's gone unnoticed all this time. According to the study by Australian biologist Monica Gagliano, published in the journal Oecologia, plants may be able to hear sounds.

To come to this conclusion, Gagliano and her team planted pea seedlings in a pair of different Y-shaped pots with two arms. The first pot's arms led to fresh water, while the other's led to either dry soil or a sealed plastic tube containing flowing water.

Naturally, the first pot's seedlings grew toward the water. What's surprising, however, is that the second pot's seedlings grew toward the sealed water supply and not the soil.

They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe, Gagliano told Scientific American. Gagliano believes that plants are able to use their leaves to detect sound waves, which make tiny vibrations (振动) as they're produced.

This could explain why so many people believe that singing or playing music to their plants helps them grow.

I had a plant that I used to wash the leaves once a week and sing to it, plant lover Heather Goodall told BBC News. It grew from being about 2 feet tall to 7 feet tall in just a couple of years.

So, does this mean we should start treating our plants like pets? Not necessarily, although perhaps it does mean we should give them more respect. I would like to see plants acknowledged more as the amazing, interesting, exotic living beings they are, and less as a mere source of human nutrition, Fatima Cvrckova, a scientist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, told BBC News.

1. What did Gagliano's study find?

A．Plants could identify the sound of water.

B．Different plants have different ways of detecting sounds.

C．Plants could tell the difference between various sounds.

D．Sound can change the direction plants grow toward.

2. According to Gagliano, plants use their _______ to hear sound.

A．flowers

B．roots

C．leaves

D．fruits

3. Why did the author mention Heather Goodall‘s example?

A．To show a different way of growing plants.

B．To prove that music plays a role in plant growth.

C．To stress the importance of treating plants like pets.

D．To point out that plants might be more interesting than we thought.

4. What would Cvrckova probably agree with?

A．Plants are just a source of human nutrition.

B．There is still a lot we don't know about plants.

C．Most people don't care enough about their plants.

D．Plants are incredible and deserve more respect.