2 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段文字，150字左右，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

In Rome there was once a poor slave whose name was Androclus. His master was a cruel man, and so unkind to him that Androclus ran away. He hid himself in a wild wood for many days; but there was no food to be found, and he grew so weak and sick that he thought he would die. So one day he climbed into a cave and lay down to wait for death, and soon he was fast asleep.

After a while, a great noise woke him up. A lion had come into the cave, and was roaring loudly. Androclus was very afraid, for he felt sure that the beast would kill him. Soon, however, he saw the lion was not angry, but that his foot were hurt.

Then Androclus grew so courageous that he started to examine the lion’s paw to see what was the matter. The lion stood quite still, and rubbed his head against the man’s shoulder. He seemed to say, “I know that you will help me.”

Androclus lifted the paw from the ground, and saw that it was a long, sharp thorn that hurt the lion so much. He took the end of the thorn between his fingers; then he gave a strong, quick pull, and out it came. The lion was full of joy. He jumped about like a dog, and licked the hands and feet of his new friend.

The two became such good friends that Androclus found his new life a very happy one. One day some soldiers found Androclus in the cave and took him back to Rome. It was the law at that time that every slave who ran away from his master should fight a hungry lion. For each of these occasions, a fierce lion was locked up for a while without food, and a time was set for the fight.

Paragraph 1

When the day came, thousands of people crowded in to see the fight.

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Paragraph 2

The people, who had expected to see the man killed by the lion, were filled with wonder.

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3 . The Internet’s carbon footprint is as bad as air travel. While it is difficult to measure precisely, estimates place it at over two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions(排放)—the same as the air travel.

Information may appear to spread around the world unseen to our eyes, but it actually passes through enormous data centers placed strategically about the globe, which store, organize and deliver everyone’s data. These centers are extremely energy intensive. In the EU, they consume close to three percent of its total energy usage and also require lots of water to prevent their computers from overheating. In the US, about a fifth of data centers draw water from already stressed water sources.

A typical spam email(垃圾邮件)emits around 0.03g of CO₂ emissions, though longer messages read on a laptop can go all the way up to 26g. Now multiply that by 333 billion(roughly the number of emails that get sent every day in 2022). That puts all those work emails into perspective. One study found if every British adult sent one less “thank you” email a day, it would save 16, 433 tons of carbon a year. It even predicted that the ICT industry could account for up to a fifth of the world’s energy consumption by 2025.

However, there are measures that we can take to reduce our digital carbon footprint. For instance, you can unsubscribe from marketing and other spam emails and only subscribe to newsletters that you still regularly read. Have regular data checks where you delete old contact lists and other documents that no longer have any use. Keep a clean inbox and delete emails you no longer need.

1. Why does the author make a comparison in the beginning?

A．To present the digital carbon footprint.

B．To emphasize the importance of air travel.

C．To advise people not to travel by airplane.

D．To inform the disadvantages of the Internet.

2. What can we infer about data centers?

A．It enjoys a wide popularity.

B．It has various kinds of functions.

C．It causes large energy consumption.

D．It has quite a complex mode of operation.

3. What’s the purpose of mentioning the figures in Paragraph 3?

A．To draw the readers’ attention.

B．To illustrate a certain information.

C．To highlight the change of CO2 emission.

D．To stress the importance of reducing CO2 emission.

4. What’s the author’s attitude towards reducing digital carbon footprint?

A．Neutral.	B．Optimistic.
C．Unfavorable.	D．Concerned.

4 . No matter how many times Sandy has rescued an animal, she never gets over the casual cruelty some people display toward unwanted pets. When she lost her own “angel” dog, she started Logan’s Legacy to help other pets in need.

Sandy recently received a phone call about a small dog, possibly a puppy, that had been abandoned on a street. Since she was too far to help on, she called a friend who lives nearby to get there as soon as possible. When her friend Tom arrived, he found a tiny dog curled(蜷缩)in a tight ball with the chain firmly tied to a tree. Someone had left food and water for her, but the puppy was too frightened to eat or drink. Once gathered up in a blanket and placed into the back seat of the car, she began to get weak quickly from dehydration(脱水)and exhaustion.

The moment she got some water and food, the puppy made a rapid recovery, and her lovely and sweet personality could finally shine! “We have named her CiCi,” Sandy added, “She is feeling so much better. She has been observed at my place and she is doing great. This sweet baby girl will never feel fearful again, and won’t ever be abandoned again.” After winning hearts at Sandy’s office, CiCi has been approved for adopting and will soon leave for her new life. Sandy and her fellow rescuers are trying their best to find her the perfect family to love her and treat her with the respect all living creatures deserve!

1. What did Sandy feel it hard to overcome?

A．The casual humanity.	B．The cruelty of humanity.
C．The kind human nature.	D．The weakness of kindness.

2. How was the dog’s condition when first found?

A．She suffered a serious illness.

B．She had nothing to eat or drink.

C．She got lost far away from home.

D．She was scared and in poor health.

3. What will be CiCi’s probable future life?

A．She will stop taking medicine.

B．She will continue further treatment.

C．She will have a perfect match for home.

D．She will get on well with Sandy forever.

4. What can be the best title of this passage?

A．A Warm Home for CiCi

B．Dog Saved Heart Fulfilled

C．A Terrible Experience of CiCi

D．Saving Dogs Saving Themselves

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。

Anji, a small county in East China’s Zhejiang Province,     1     (receive) over 28 million tourists every year. There are more than 300 coffee shops there,     2     in terms of population density has surpassed that of Shanghai. “A cup of coffee bridges the gap between the big city and the small county,” said Han Jie, a Shanghai tourist who     3     (temporary) escaped the large city and came to Anji over the weekend. In Zhejiang,     4     increasing number of coffeehouse owners are venturing into rural areas to meet the demands of a growing population of young and adventurous coffee enthusiasts.

    5     (locate) in the bamboo forests of Penghu Village in Anji , a café called Waterfall Coffee has gained popularity     6     social media influencers. Visitors can not only taste coffee on the cliff halfway up the mountain, admiring waterfalls in the distance,     7     enjoy boating on the lake with an excellent view.

The outdoor café, the Deep Blue Coffeehouse, has received 350,000 tourists in less than a year, with the highest daily number of visitors     8     (reach) 8,000 people. By far, the small coffee shop has fueled the rural economy of Hongmiao Village in some way, causing university students     9     (cooperate) with the local government in organizing a start-up fair, with the aim of attracting more university     10     (graduate) to start business in the village.

6 . 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。

I can count a dozen friends, all in the 1950s, who adopted a puppy. Actually, I did, too. Last year, I was suddenly consumed by the urgent desire to acquire a seven-week-old Australian shepherd. For one thing, this breed is one of the most energetic on the planet, whereas I am bookish, lazy, and middle-aged.

My trouble with dogs is that I never have the remotest clue what they want, and they never seem to have the slightest idea of what I’m saying to them. He was highly alert, yet unable to grasp a single thing. Kevin’s entire communicative gestures — whether he wanted food, exercise, permission to jump on the sofa, a toy, or, who knows, a conversation about the electric bill — consisted of walking up to me and staring. He did this about 50 times a day, just staring brightly without moving a muscle, and after years of living together, I still didn’t know what he wanted. We coexisted in a state of profound mutual (相互的) incomprehension.

“Sometimes I think,” I wrote in my journal, “it doesn’t matter that I don’t know what he wants, because we have nothing in common. Whatever he wants will be something I don’t want. He probably wants me to go outside and chase squirrels. I don’t want to.”

But one afternoon, there was only Kevin and I at home. My husband was on business abroad for several days and my son was also abroad attending college. I enjoyed my favorite book leisurely while Kevin had a rest or stared at me as usual. It suddenly began to thunder aloud and soon rained cats and dogs. I dashed out of the front-door to fetch the vegetables in my parking lot. The wind was so strong that the front-door just slammed loudly, closed, after I made my way out. Worse still, when I came back with the rescued vegetables, I found the keys were not with me. There was also no backup (备份) of the keys outside my house.

注意：
1．续写词数应为150个左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
At last, I realized the only one who could help out was Kevin.
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Eventually Kevin began to act.
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7 . It is believed that it’s dangerous to have plants in the bedroom. Plants take in carbon dioxide (CO₂) and produce oxygen (氧气) in the day.     1    . The build-up of CO₂ is a real problem for indoor air quality, which has been shown to influence health, so it is easy to see where the concern comes from. But to consider whether sharing our bedroom with our plants can harm health, we should consider three things.

Firstly, how much CO₂ do plants produce at night compared with what they take in during the day?     2     For the answer depends on everything from species to light levels and even room temperature.

Thankfully, in 2015, researchers at Turkey’s Kastamonu University found that large houseplants take in between six and eight times as much CO2 in the day as they produce at night.

    3     A single human breath contains around 40, 000 ppm of CO2, more than 10 times the effect a plant could have in 8 hours, so you might want to throw your partner out before your plants.

Finally, we don’t live in the sealed (密封的) boxes in which these studies are carried out.     4     The air is even exchanged when we move around. According to one recent review, we need houseplants to keep indoor air fresh, and to fight some pollution.     5    

Let’s enjoy houseplants whenever we like, because if sleeping near plants were bad for our health, camping in a forest would be deadly.

A．This is hard to answer.

B．So, they are quite necessary.

C．The question has more than one answer.

D．Besides, we often share a room with someone else.

E．Indoor air is being exchanged through doors and windows.

F．At night they compete with us for the air we breathe while asleep.

G．Secondly, compare the influence of a plant with that of a person sharing a room.

8 . The behavior of beavers and other animals has often inspired expressions in English. If someone is very industrious or hard-working in tackling many things at once, we can say the person is “as busy as a beaver.” This phrase hints at one of the characteristics of these wild animals—they are indeed active creatures.

With their large teeth, which are orange due to iron in the tooth enamel (牙齿的珐琅质), beavers can cut down trees and change their environments like no other animals except humans. They use these fallen trees to build dams, creating safe, watery environments. The busy beavers build homes — called lodges — in the ponds created by the dams. The only way to get in and out of lodges is by entering an underwater opening of the structures. This offers beavers protection from predators such as bears, wolves, or coyotes.

It’s also interesting to note that beavers have another reason for cutting down trees aside from building dams. Beavers can digest cellulose, so wood is a significant food source for them, with their diet 15 also consisting of leaves and aquatic plants. Chewing on trees also helps beavers keep their teeth sharp, making it easier for them to keep chopping down trees.

Of course, no discussion about beavers would be complete without mentioning their most noticeable feature their large, flat tails, which have different uses. One is that they act as a rudder, helping them steer in the water. Another is that the animals pound their tails on the water to warn other beavers of danger. Since beavers work so hard building their homes and warning others of potential harm, it’s no surprise that busy as a beaver is a common phrase.

1. Which of the following usages of “as busy as a beaver” correct?

A．My cat is as busy as a beaver since it always lies on the sofa.

B．This kind of tree is as busy as a beaver because it takes hundreds of years for it to be used as timber.

C．Hanna is having a cup of coffee and listening to music in the living room. She is truly as busy as a beaver.

D．Oliver is responsible for two projects and has to train the three new employees, so he has been as busy as a beaver recently.

2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?

A．What countries beavers are found in.	B．How beavers keep themselves safe.
C．The animals that threaten beavers.	D．The food that beavers eat.

3. How does building dams protect beavers?

A．The wood is very strong.

B．The water from dams helps beavers digest wood.

C．Dams make it harder for other animals to catch.

D．Dams provide beavers with lots of water to drink.

4. If a beaver sees a pack of wolves approaching, which body part will it use to alert others?

A．Tail

B．Teeth

C．Paw

D．Head

9 . In a lab in London, newborn chicks took the first steps of their life and might become part of solving one of the brain’s big puzzles. Elisabetta Versace, the lead author of the new study and head of the Prepared Minds Lab at Queen Mary, and her co-workers published their findings on Tuesday in Biology Letters.

In a simple test, researchers placed the downy animals, hatched after less than a day in complete darkness, one at a time into a special box. Two screens on the opposite sides of the box played videos of moving orange balls, one moving upward and the other downward. Over the course of 20 minutes, most of the chicks hesitantly walked over to the end of the box with the upward-moving ball.

Biologists call the mechanisms (生物机制) that assist animals in their earliest moments “evolutionary predispositions (进化倾向)” or “priors”. “Studying how predisposition s work in humans is difficult,” says Elisa Raffalla Ferre, co-author of the new study, as babies take time to develop complex skills. By the time human babies can easily move, they have already spent significant time learning. Chicks, however, can perform relatively complex actions very soon after hatching, which makes them ideal candidates for exploring how predispositions function.

Why this preference for objects that move against gravity exists at all remains unclear. “Going against gravity in a consistent way is associated with animate objects in the ecological world,” Versace says, “because usually you see that water flows down or a rock falls down.” Lifeless objects, on the other hand, are unlikely to move consistently against gravity.

The newly released article is consistent with previous research, according to Orsola Rosa Salva, a comparative psychologist at the University of Trento. What Salva wants to see next in this field are experiments that begin to identify what areas of the brain are active when predispositions are launched, so scientists can better understand how the mechanisms work. Versace hopes that future research can offer insights into the way the brain is organized to make sense of the world.

1. What did the test find out about newborn chicks?

A．They liked bright colors.	B．They had a poor sense of direction.
C．They preferred rising objects.	D．They picked up first steps with difficulty.

2. Why are newborn chicks better subjects for the test than human babies?

A．Their mechanisms are more complex.

B．They were already studied more in the past.

C．Their evolutionary predispositions work more effectively.

D．They can exhibit complex behaviors soon after birth.

3. What does Versace say about going against gravity?

A．It is common among species in nature.	B．It is a natural behavior of living animals.
C．It contributes to the survival of animals.	D．It helps newborn animals to learn quickly.

4. What does Salva expect of future experiments?

A．They’ll be carried out in the wild.	B．They’ll offer detailed workings of the brain.
C．They’ll compare the brains of different species.	D．They’ll apply to scientific research in related fields.

10 . Scientists have shown how plants can protect themselves against genetic (基因的) damage caused by environmental stresses. The growing tips of plant roots and shoots have an in-built mechanism (机制) that spells cell death if DNA damage is detected, avoiding passing on faulty DNA.

Plants have small populations of stem cells (干细胞) at the tips of their roots and shoots, which enable them to continuously grow and produce new tissues throughout their lifetime. These stem cells serve as ancestors for plant tissues and organs. However, any genetic faults present in the stem cells will continue to exist and be passed on permanently throughout the plant’s life, which could last thousands of years.

Given the critical role of stem cells and their exposure to potentially dangerous environments at the growing tips of roots and shoots, safeguards are necessary to prevent stem cell faults from becoming fixed. Researchers Nick Fulcher and Robert Sablowski, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, aimed to uncover these protective mechanisms. Through experiments involving X-rays and chemicals, they discovered that stem cells were more sensitive to DNA damage compared to other cells.

When DNA damage occurs, the cells have the capacity to detect it and cause programmed cells to die, preventing the propagation of the damaged genetic code to the rest of the plant tissues. This process has similarities to the safeguard mechanism found in animal cells, which has been broadly studied due to its relevance in preventing cancer.

The identification of a similar protective system in plants is of great interest in the field of plant development. It also helps scientists develop plants that can better handle environmental stress. So knowledge of how plants deal with these stresses is of fundamental significance to agricultural science’s response to climate change.

1. What is the function of the in-built mechanism in plants?

A．To produce more roots and shoots.	B．To increase the overall lifetime of the plant.
C．To enhance plant growth and nutrient intake.	D．To stop genetic faults in stem cells passing on.

2. What can we know about stem cells in plants according to the text?

A．They are relatively abundant in quantity.	B．They are resistant to environmental stresses.
C．They make quick response to DNA damage.	D．They have the ability to repair damaged DNA.

3. What does the underlined word “propagation” in paragraph 4 mean?

A．Spread.

B．Change.

C．Existence.

D．Self-repair.

4. What does the last paragraph focus on?

A．The way of dealing with climate change on the earth.

B．The significance of identifying the protective system in plants.

C．The method of ensuring plant survival under environmental stress.

D．The urgency of developing plants that can handle environmental stress.