1 . Lucy was rescued from a rural farm in New South Wales, Australia, two years ago. She was suffering from chlamydia (衣原体病), a disease widespread among koalas. Today, she is one of “the lucky” living creatures in tree corridors (走廊) that have been created by volunteers to protect koalas and other animals by saving their quickly shrinking habitats, or natural environment.
The corridors, planted by the local conservation group Bangalow Koalas, are made up of large systems of plants. They are intended for koalas and other animals like the glossy black cockatoos, possums, and wallabies. All of them are endangered, or at risk of becoming extinct. The corridors provide a safe path across the koala’s increasingly broken habitat. “Our corridors are actually trying to get them away from humans, from cars and from dogs,” said Linda Sparrow, president of Bangalow Koalas. “They can safely move across the landscapes and don’t have to put up with us humans.”
The koala is predicted to be extinct in the wild in New South Wales by 2050. Some of the biggest dangers include wildfires and habitat loss through land clearing for development. Koalas have already been declared endangered in several Australian states. A recent report by the Australian Koala Foundation said the animal was worth an estimated $3.2 billion per year to the tourism industry.
Founded in 2016, Bangalow Koalas has planted over 936,000 trees on 119 properties, helping koala conservation and improving the local ecosystem. The group, which depends on com munity volunteers, aims to plant 500,000 trees by 2025. Volunteer Lindy Stacker, who has been planting trees for over five years, still remains devoted to the cause. She said the activity is good for mental health and has brought the community together. “I can’t imagine a world where there’s no koalas in the wild. We’re going to do everything we can possibly to. make sure that won’t happen,” Lindy said.
1. Who is Lucy?| A．A farmer. | B．A patient. | C．A volunteer. | D．A koala. |
| A．To shelter koalas from human threat. | B．To test the local natural environment. |
| C．To save koalas suffering from chlamydia. | D．To stop koalas’ habitats from being rebuilt. |
| A．The reason for koalas’ extinction. | B．Koalas’ value in tourism industry. |
| C．The necessity of saving koalas. | D．People’s deep love for koalas. |
| A．Bangalow Koalas: A Group Intended For Koalas |
| B．Tree Corridors: A Lifeline For Endangered Koalas |
| C．Bangalow Koalas: Call On Volunteers For Koalas’ Protection |
| D．Tree Corridors: Responsible For The Loss Of Koalas’ Habitats |
2 . Family Vacations in Hawaii
Whether your interests are history, native cultures, hiking, water sports, or simply relaxing in the sun, Hawaii has abundant choices to keep you and your family entertained.
Waikiki BeachThis famous two-mile stretch of sand is home to scores of family-friendly beach hotels and all kinds of action-packed excitement. Waikiki Beach is the perfect place to go if you’re looking for warm ocean water and golden beaches. Kids will enjoy walking along the beach, stopping for shaved ice or an ice cream and taking a dip in a safe area of the ocean.
Oahu’s North ShoreSome of the tallest ocean waves in the world are found at Oahu, Hawaii’s North Shore coastline during the winter months. These crashing walls of water are born for surfing and offer one of the best free shows on the islands. The North Shore is home to world-class surf contests, attracting the world’s top surfers.
Polynesian Cultural CenterNothing appeals to the whole family like Hawaiian past coming alive. Besides, the colorful costumes, lively songs, and traditional dances in the Pacific region are presented here. You’ll see customs of Fiji, New Zealand, Marquesas, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga, and Hawaii all represented in Polynesian Cultural Center’s re-created island villages, which is decorated with palm trees and tropical gardens.
Waimea Canyon (峡谷) State ParkMore than 3,500 feet deep, this landmark on Hawaii’s island of Kauai is the largest canyon in the Pacific. Unlike Grand Canyon, plentiful rain keeps Waimea Canyon and its surrounding area thick with vegetation (植被), and visitors are frequently treated to the sight of vivid rainbows. It offers a great canyon view and a covered picnic area.
1. What makes Oahu’s North Shore known to the world?| A．Its best free cultural shows. | B．Its family-friendly beach hotels. |
| C．Having the tallest coastline. | D．Being a perfect place for surfing. |
| A．Waikiki Beach. | B．Oahu’s North Shore. |
| C．Polynesian Cultural Center. | D．Waimea Canyon State Park. |
| A．It has a covered picnic area. | B．It has a depth of over 3,500 feet. |
| C．It’s rich in plants and rainfall. | D．It owns a unique kind of vegetation. |
The Mount Changbaishan Geopark, along with five other Chinese geoparks,
“China is rich in geological heritage, with a broad distribution and a complete range of geological types,” Ren Fang,
China set up national-level geoparks and began applying for Global Geopark status in 2003 in response to UNESCO's initiative
The Mount Changbaishan Geopark, newly
4 . You are in: North Yorkshire > Places > Great Yorkshire Show > Wall to wall
Wall to Wall
A dry stone wall is a remarkable achievement of engineering! The Yorkshire Dry Stone Walling Guild will be demonstrating the craft at this year's Great Yorkshire Show. Find out about the eye-catching structures.
Winding their way across some of Britain's most beautiful landscapes. for many hundreds of years, dry stone walls remain a typical and much-loved feature of the Yorkshire countryside. The Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors are no exception.
Dry stone walling is an old craft which marks the boundaries between fields and parcels of land. The walls are built without using any cement (水泥) jointing and the walls fit in with the surroundings, providing shelter and habitat for a wide range of animals and insects. They can last for more than a lifetime and need repairing and preserving. However, far from dying out, the craft is alive and kicking all over the county.
The Yorkshire Dry Stone Walling Guild (YDSWG) was founded 20 years or so ago and is dedicated to the craft. It is a voluntary, non-profit-making organisation with around 130 members. Its aim is to preserve the walls and the skills involved in building and maintaining them. It also encourages an interest in the history of dry stone walls.
Brian Wood, secretary of the YDSWG, told us about their involvement with the Great Yorkshire Show.
“Last year we finished a wall we were building around the pond near the showground's Brown Gate. The Guild hopes to build more walls and we look forward to meeting all our enthusiasts again. Hope you will lay a stone or two as you have done in the past.”1. What do we know about dry stone walls?
| A．They are newly discovered. | B．They hold no more appeal to the public. |
| C．They now face extinction. | D．They are harmonious with the environment. |
| A．Training craftsmen. | B．Preserving the tradition. |
| C．Promoting tourism. | D．Enrolling volunteers |
| A．Local. | B．Fashion. | C．Opinion. | D．People. |
5 . Native plants planted by the State Botanical Garden of Georgia at the University of Georgia near the GA-10 Loop in Athens, Ga., are changing the area from being covered in kudzu back to a more natural state.
The project, funded by Keep Athens-Clarke County Beautiful, was planted in November 2021. Volunteers and students from the UGA College of Environment and Design all participated to plant the area along the entrance ramp (斜坡) next to the GA-10 Loop at Milledge Avenue.
Zach Wood, the grasslands coordinator (协调人) at the State Botanical Garden, said all the plants chosen for the project are native to Georgia. He said that they selected hardy species of plants they felt pretty confident would survive. In total, 22 native plant species are planted at the site.
“Native plants function to support their ecosystem, and that’s important because our roadsides are turning into monocultures of non-native species that don’t support our native wildlife,” Wood said.
He added that non-native species don’t filter (过滤) water as well as native species, which is significant on roadsides to handle stormwater runoff.
When they’ve checked on the plants, all the species planted were established and growing. Wood said there was concern the plants would succumb to drought, but the value of native plants is their ability to survive in stressful conditions.
The team doesn’t water the area at all.
“It would go against the spirit of doing it, “Wood said. “We’re trying to figure out the least effort to put native plants back into a place that’s been kind of beat up.”
“This project is so important because it’s so visible,” Wood said. “It’s going to demonstrate an alternative way of managing roadsides.”
“We’re always looking for ways to make things sustainable,” said Richard Littleton, state agronomist (农学家) manager at GDOT. “The more we can do that’s natural, it helps everything. It’s the right thing to do to be a good caretaker of our lands.”
1. Why was kudzu replaced?| A．Ugly-looking. | B．Too large. | C．Nonnative. | D．Artificial. |
| A．Survive from. | B．Give in to. | C．Add to. | D．Get rid of. |
| A．Environmentally. | B．Financially. | C．Academically. | D．Politically. |
| A．Planting Green Species at Roadside Areas. |
| B．Choosing Right Plants to Support Ecosystem. |
| C．Replacing Non-native Species for Survival. |
| D．Restoring Native Plants to Roadside Areas. |
| A．He isn’t in London in autumn. |
| B．He missed the best season in London. |
| C．He doesn’t see a foggy London. |
I still remember what I felt on a bright Saturday morning in late September, at a five-kilometer race in Clarkston, Georgia.
It was an unusual morning. About an hour earlier, when we drove into town to participate in the race, my 11-year-old son noticed a green tree cricket（蟋蟀） on my car. It was friendly, no longer than a fingernail. It jumped onto my son’s finger, and walked across my shirt, and then went back to my son’s hand, where it stayed so long that we eventually gave it a name: Little Friend.
The walk from the car to the registration table was perhaps a quarter of a mile. Little Friend stayed with my son. Then, we walked back across the railroad tracks and waited for the race to start. A few minutes before the race, Little Friend either fell or jumped off my son’s hand and landed on the sidewalk. Maybe it wanted to go free. But this was not a good place for that. Pedestrian（行人） traffic was heavy, so Little Friend was in danger. My son knelt and reached out his hand. It came back.
The race was about to start, and the tiny green insect was in for a wild ride. My son would run fast, and the race would be long. The race began. I ran well enough, and felt excited at the finish line. But that thrill gave way to anxiety when my son didn’t show up.
I knew he could run 5 kilometers in about 30 minutes. When I didn’t see him at the 35-minute mark, I began to wonder what had gone wrong. And as the 40-minute mark approached and he still didn’t appear, I went out looking for him. Had he got lost? I crossed the railroad tracks and looked down a long straightaway, hoping to see his face. Finally, there he was, just ahead of the 45-minute mark.
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。
Little Friend was riding proudly on one finger of my son’s right hand.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Smiling, we walked back to the car with Little Friend.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. How is the weather now?
| A．Cloudy. | B．Sunny. | C．Snowy. |
| A．Practical. | B．Crazy. | C．Shameful. |
| A．It is very dangerous. |
| B．It is easy for skiing in the area. |
| C．It is very good for exercising legs. |
9 . For nearly as long as the modern computer has existed, it has been used to forecast the weather. First used during World War II to simulate (模拟) nuclear weapons, computers were soon adopted to simulate the future state of the atmosphere, creating the modern discipline of weather prediction. Although that discipline has grown ever more complicated and now produces reliable forecasts several weeks in advance, its approach remains the same: using large amounts of calculating power to solve equations (方程).
Over the past year, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to change that. Tech companies including Google and Nvidia have trained AI models to predict the weather up to 10 days in advance, with an accuracy equaling or even topping traditional models — and with far less calculation overhead. Rather than solving equations, these AI models predict the near future based on patterns learned through training on 40 years of past weather, which is recorded by the traditional model of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the world’s top weather agency. Once trained, the AI models can work out a forecast on a computer in 1 minute rather than taking 2 hours to run on a supercomputer.
ECMWF has already begun to produce its own AI forecast, and other weather agencies are eager to catch up. The new models aren’t perfect. They struggle to predict certain essential features—hurricane intensity, for example. But AI forecasters will only improve as they begin to learn from direct weather observations collected by sensors, not just data already passed through existing models. Besides, their speed could allow agencies to run them over and over, as they capture in the atmosphere the full spread of uncertainty, be it necessary or unnecessary for weather prediction.
No one expects traditional weather prediction to disappear. Another branch, climate models, an extension of weather forecasting, for example, rely on equation solving just as traditional weather models do. But in the long term, the output of climate models may itself become training data for a climate forecasting AI, which might ultimately do a better job than the traditional models.
1. How do AI models predict weather?| A．By running on a supercomputer. | B．By recording traditional models. |
| C．By working on the existing data. | D．By making massive calculations. |
| A．They may be overly operated. | B．They may be slow to respond. |
| C．They may confuse natural disasters. | D．They may bring unfair competitions. |
| A．They lack accurate data. | B．They need intensive training. |
| C．They work in a traditional way. | D．They determine weather forecasting. |
| A．How Can AI Aid Atmosphere Study? |
| B．Should We Trust AI to Predict Hurricanes? |
| C．Weather Forecast Is Having an AI Moment |
| D．Tech Giants Are Competing in Data Collection |
Jessica and I wanted a dog more than anything else on Earth. At night, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed, Jessica and I would sneak out our bedroom windows and we’d sit together on the roof and talk about dogs. Sometimes, we had an argument about what our ideal dog would be. But it didn’t really matter — any dog or puppy (小狗崽) would do.
One summer night, as we sat together on the roof, Jessica saw something. “What’s that?” She pointed down toward a dark shadow on our driveway. The moon was up, and everything looked either black or milky. All I saw was darkness. Then the shadow moved. For one astonished second, Jessica and I just stared at each other. Then we scrambled down onto the porch. There in our yard stood a dog. A big, black dog with long hair. Jessica made a little kissing noise and held out her hand. And the dog came to us slowly, taking a few steps forward, then a step back, not sure whether to trust us, I guess.
“She’s a female,” said Jessica.
“Oh,” I said, pulling back and looking. The dog was so skinny and her coat was full of dirt. She must be a homeless dog.
“What can we give her?” I asked. Then I had a thought. “Bread! I’ll get her a big loaf of bread.” So, Jessica waited with the dog, and I sneaked into the kitchen to fetch the bread.
The dog got the bread and ran into the shadows and disappeared. We smiled at each other in the moonlight, our insides full of excitement. “We’re going to have a dog!” I whispered.
On the following nights, the dog, who we named “Shadow”, would come and Jessica and I would prepare food for her. But we never saw her eating anything, and each time she got the food she would run away into the darkness quickly.
“Why didn’t she eat?” I was curious. “And she is still so skinny.”
“We can look into the case,” Jessica said. So, we decided to find out the truth.
One night, we followed Shadow secretly at a distance.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Finally, we had a dog in our home and it was one of the puppies.
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