1 . Many people learn at an early age to associate the color red with danger. So might it make sense to print medication   ________ in red ink? And since the color blue is known to call to mind the freedom of open skies, might it help artists to   ________ in a studio painted in that color? According to new research into how the brain reacts to ________ , the answer to both of these questions is yes. The study revealed that the color red seems to improve a subject’s attention to ________ , while blue appears to stimulate creativity—all without the subject realizing that his or her brain is being influenced.

“People are not ________ this effect at all,” marveled the study’s lead researcher Juliet Zhu, who studies the effects of environmental cues on behavior. To study the brain’s response to specific colors, Zhu’s team administered a series of   ________ tests to college students. For most of the tests, the students were placed in front of a computer screen that was colored either red or blue.

The researchers found that when the screen was red, subjects performed better on detail-oriented tasks. In one test,   ________ , students were asked to memorize a list of words. Zhu found that students who studied the list displayed on a red screen were able to recall more words than students who studied the list on a ________ screen.

In other tests, creative abilities seemed to be ________ by looking at the color blue. For instance, the students were asked to brainstorm potential uses for bricks. Students sitting in front of blue screens tended to come up with ideas that were   ________ , such as “make a paperweight” and “build a pet scratching post.” Students sitting in front of a red screen, on the other hand, were more likely to list ________ uses for bricks, such as “build a house.”

Researchers concluded from the tests that seeing red causes people to take the extra time to think ________ when performing detail-oriented tasks, such as ________ , proofreading— and, of course, reading those all-important warning labels. ________ most people learn early in their development that red signifies potential danger, Zhu said, seeing red perhaps helps people to slow down in order to perform at their best in a potentially risky situation. Seeing blue, on the other hand, produces images of the sky, freedom and peace. Perhaps these images, researchers supposed, ________ feelings. “It’s really this learned association with these colors that drives these different motivations,” Zhu said.

1.

A．instructions

B．symptoms

C．warnings

D．treatments

2.

A．create

B．relax

C．decorate

D．design

3.

A．skies

B．medication

C．colors

D．paint

4.

A．danger

B．detail

C．emotions

D．vigor

5.

A．distracted by

B．aware of

C．content with

D．curious about

6.

A．cognitive

B．intelligence

C．mental

D．memory

7.

A．on one hand

B．at the same time

C．for example

D．that is

8.

A．grey

B．blue

C．green

D．white

9.

A．proven

B．acquired

C．recognized

D．enhanced

10.

A．more abstract

B．more positive

C．more innovative

D．more valuable

11.

A．practical

B．academic

C．economical

D．profitable

12.

A．critically

B．logically

C．carefully

D．independently

13.

A．painting

B．memorizing

C．designing

D．brainstorming

14.

A．Unless

B．When

C．Since

D．Though

15.

A．turn up

B．stir up

C．set off

D．give off

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The Last Generation

Rising sea levels threaten the very existence of the Pacific island nations. And young people     1     families have deep roots on the islands are starting to wonder if they will be the last generation. But the islanders’ determination is as strong as their connection to their home.

The nations of the Pacific Islands recognize that     2     it comes to climate change, they are all in the same boat. Working together, they set about     3     (look) for ways to take charge and address the problem. There’s one feature of island life that gives these small nations an opportunity to make a big difference. People on islands rely on most of the things     4     (deliver) by ships, and the environmental impact     5     the marine transportation is enormous.

    6     (realize) it was up to them to come up with solutions in their own backyards (bays and harbors), Pacific islanders came up with a plan. At the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019, the governments of Fiji and the Marshall Islands announced the Pacific Blue Shipping Partnership, which promises a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions from shipping by 2030     7     wants to achieve zero-carbon shipping by 2050.

They plan to adopt some really cool, environmentally friendly, carbon-free technologies, including solar-powered ships and hydrogen fuel cells. Through the partnership and their efforts     8     (assemble) a fleet (舰队) of these greener ships, Pacific island nations are leading the world by example. They’re hoping their move     9     start a wave of change in the shipping industry.

Sea levels are rising, but hopes aren’t sinking in the Pacific islands, where people are fighting for life and land. The citizens of these island nations     10     (inspire) to work together so they all can survive and develop in their homelands for generations to come.

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. abandoned B. challenge C. colored D. demonstrate E. ensures F. initiatives G. innovation H. pilot I. purchased J. recycled K. tailors

Lego: One Step Closer to Being Sustainable

The Lego Group is one step closer to reaching its goal of making all its products from sustainable materials by 2030.

The Danish toymaker revealed a prototype (雏形) brick made from     1     plastic. In a news release, Lego said the PET plastic from     2     bottles makes up the first brick to meet the company’s “strict quality and safety requirements.” One way the company     3     safety is by sourcing materials from suppliers that use processes approved by the US Food & Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority.

“The biggest     4     on our sustainability journey is rethinking and innovating new materials that are as long-lasting, strong and high quality as our existing bricks—and fit with LEGO elements made over the past 60 years,” Lego Group Vice President of Environmental Responsibility Tim Brooks said. “With this prototype we’re able to    5     the progress we’re making to the public.”

It will be “some time” before bricks made from used materials can be     6    , Lego said. The company will continue to test and develop the PET formulation (配方) and decide whether to move to the     7     production phase, which is expected to take at least a year. One factor the company is testing is how the material can be     8    .

“Experimentation and failing is an important part of learning and     9    . Just as kids build, unbuild and rebuild with LEGO bricks at home, we’re doing the same in our lab,” Brooks said.

The move follows last year’s announcement that the company was making a $400 million investment over three years into sustainability     10    . It included phasing out the single-use plastic bags from its boxes and instead using recyclable paper for its packaging.

4 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

The problem of electronic waste

We have gradually come to realise that in two ways in particular, modern hi-tech can be bad for the planet. The first is its energy use; the worldwide scale of information technology is so enormous that electronics now produce fully two percent of global carbon emissions, which is about the same as the highly controversial emissions of aeroplanes. The other is the hardware, when it comes to the end of its natural life. This, increasingly, is pretty short. We have hardly noticed this important stream of waste, so much so that a Greenpeace report on the untraced and unreported e-waste two years ago referred to it as “the hidden flow”. We need to be aware of it.

The latest United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report estimates that worldwide, electronic waste is mounting by about 40 million tons a year. So what can we do about it?

The European Union has recognised the problem by adopting a key principle: producer responsibility. In other words, making it the duty of manufacturers of electronic goods to ensure their safe disposal at the end of their lives. In practice, an EU regulation now means that electronics dealers must either take back the equipment they sold you, or help to finance a network of drop-off points, such as public recycling sites. Its main feature is quite ambitious: it aims to deal with “everything with a plug”.

The new UN report suggests that all countries could do something about the problem with a change in design. Groups such as Greenpeace have led the way in putting pressure on major manufacturing companies to find substitutes for the toxic chemicals inside their products. Encouragingly, they have had some success in forcing them to develop non-poisonous alternatives to these. This may be the real way forward.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

In a bid to control the nation’s growing problem with food wastage, the South Korean government has started a unique initiative – “Pay as You Trash”. As of now, the South Korean government has three methods     1     place to charge citizens for the food thrown away. One is through a RFI card. When users tap this card over a specially designed food waste bin, the lid (盖子) will open, allowing them to dump their waste. The waste     2     (weigh) automatically and a bill is recorded in the user’s account which the user needs to settle on a monthly basis. Each RFI bin costs $1,500 and     3     serve 60 households.

The second billing method is through pre-paid garbage bags. These specially designed bags are priced based on volume. There’s also an electronic management system,     4     residents put food waste directly into the bin and pay for it by purchasing a special tag     5     (attach) to the bin.

Every household in South Korea is subject to one of these payment systems.     6     the new payment method affects you depends totally on how much food you throw away. Whatever system you use, you are sure to feel the pain of food waste. The more food you throw out, the more you end up     7     (pay).

And it’s working. Residents like Seoul housewife Ms. Kwan have found it necessary to adopt innovative methods to avoid food waste. She picks     8     wet out of leftover food before throwing it away. She also separates fresh produce and other food items into     9     (small) portions so that only the required amount is used up per meal. “     10     the fees can be reduced, I’m willing to adopt any innovative method to avoid food waste,” she said.

6 . Out-of-control SpaceX Rocket

A SpaceX rocket is now headed directly for the moon after spending almost seven years flying through space, experts say. The rocket was originally launched to send a space weather satellite to the Lagrange point— a gravity-neutral position four times farther than the moon and in direct line with the sun.     1    

At this phase, it did not have enough fuel to return to Earth’s atmosphere. But meanwhile it lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system.     2     Space observers believe that it is on course to intersect (相交) with the moon. Bill Gray, who writes software to track near-Earth objects, has said the rocket will very likely hit the far side of the moon, near the equator. “This is the first unintentional case of space junk hitting the moon of which I’m aware,” Gray added.

    3     Because of the unpredictable effect of sunlight “pushing” on the rocket and “difficulty in measuring rotation (旋转) periods”, its orbit may be slightly altered. “But these unpredictable effects are very small,” Gray wrote. He added that further observations were needed to decide the precise time and location of the impact. In a recent blog post, he wrote that the rocket has made a close lunar flyby, and will definitely make an impact.

As for whether the collision (相撞) could be viewed from Earth, Gray says it will probably go unobserved.” Even if it hit on the near side of the moon, the impact occurs a couple of days after New Moon, which was hardly observable, he added, “to me, the impact was not a big deal.”     4     They believe that the event will allow for observation of valuable lunar materials ejected (弹射) by the rockets strike.

A．So the rocket has been following a somewhat chaotic orbit since.

B．Nevertheless, space enthusiasts believe the impact could provide valuable data.

C．It was part of SpaceX’s space exploration programme.

D．But after completing a long burn of its engines, the rocket’s second phase became a problem.

E．The exact spot that the rocket will hit remains unclear.

F．The lunar phase reveals the passage of time in the night sky.

7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Lovely Team Members

I fell in love with rhinos when I worked in a zoo in the 80s, and spent much of the next 20 years as the keeper of the largest captive (圈养的) group of rare black rhinos.

Being aggressive and stupid is     1     impresses urban residents about rhinos, but I discovered a group of sensitive, affectionate animals.     2     (weigh) over a ton, black rhinos are unexpectedly alert and have an unpredictable nature. However,     3     care and reassurance (安慰), they can be very trusting.

In the past few years, the number of rhinos has dropped dramatically, during     4     time I have helped look after rhinos being moved to reserves. Last year, I helped on a project to fly five black rhinos to the Serengeti National Park, where they had to be kept captive for a few weeks before     5     (release) into the wild. They lived in “bomas” wooden enclosures with “bedrooms”.

A couple of weeks before their planned release, the sky was filled with smoke and the flames were blowing over it.     6     (make) sure everything was fine, we rushed toward the bomas. I was terrified that the rhinos     7     (catch) fire, so my initial response was to release them. But I couldn’t, because they     8     (not fit) with transmitters (发射器). If I let them out, we would have great difficulty tracking them down. So I dashed back to the bomas and called the rhinos to their “bedrooms”. To my surprise, they moved without hesitation and were     9     (panicky) than I had thought. After half an hour, the wind changed direction and the fire began to die down.

That we and the rhinos had escaped unscathed (未受伤的) was a miracle. The relationship we had built with those lovely animals proved crucial.     10     it, all our work would have been for nothing. The teamwork of everybody there played a large part too and the rhinos were very much part of that team.

8 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. motivate       B. accidentally       C. highlighting       D. plantations       E. engaging F. apparent       G. purpose H. sensitive       I. increasingly       J. decent       K. treat

Ball- Rolling Bumble Bees Just Wanna Have Fun

Playtime isn’ t just for children. Lab- kept bumble bees roll small wooden balls around for no

    1     purpose other than fun, a new study reveals. It supports evidence that bees experience pleasure,    2     the importance of protecting them in the wild and treating them well in their natural habitats.

“It is super cool,” says Elizabeth Tibbetts, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan. “We usually think about insects as being so different that they lack complex behaviors.” But not everyone is convinced the behavior is in fact play.

Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, and his colleagues    3     came across the new evidence. The team was studying how bumble bees learn complex behaviors from their comrades by training the insects to move wooden balls to specific locations. If a bee moved a ball to the right place, it got a sugary     4    . The researchers noticed that some bees moved the balls even when no reward was offered. They just seemed to like going back to them and playing around with them and rolling them all over the place. The careful design of the experiments has convinced him the bees are indeed     5     in play.

Because play implies a capacity to experience emotions, documenting it in insects could have    6     implications. Insects are     7     being raised for animal feed, and there are no regulations governing their welfare. Honey bees are also known to become stressed and more     8     to disease and bee communities collapse when industrialized beekeepers transport them long distances on trucks to     9     and vast fields without diverse flowers nearby, Chittka says. The researchers hope their findings might also     10     greater fellow feeling for — and protection of — wild insects.

9 . “It’s a windy day in Laguna San Ignacio, and the waves seem to come from all directions,” said Sara Clemence in Bloomberg Businessweek. My children and I are riding on a 18-foot boat—small enough that we can reach down into the water if a gray whale swims up alongside. And then we see what we’ve come for: a heart-shaped shower of water and a dark mass rushing below it. As instructed, we splash (溅泼) the water strongly to signal the huge whale, which turns out to be a mother with her weeks-old baby. The baby soon swims beneath our boat, emerges to blow mist in my face, then “lies onto its side like a 2-ton puppy.” Leaning down, I touched its skin gently. “It feels electric. Also, a bit like petting a hard-boiled egg.”

San Ignacio is one of very few places where a person can pet a whale. The whales come each year to the coast of Baja California to give birth and to mate. If you’re lucky, you can “shake hands with a leatheryfin (鳍)” or even “plant a kiss on a cold, salty cheek.” I usually worry about such interactions, because wild creatures can become deeply stressed by human contact. But boat numbers are strictly limited in these protected waters.   And any whale that approaches a boat does so on its own terms. Like that baby whale: “We see him a few times, and he seems to like being petted and splashed.”

So we are two species, connecting through touch, but also through eye contact: “More than once, after nosing around our boat, a young gray turns on its side so one dark, baseball-size eye is looking up at us.” Whalers   used   to   call   gray   whales   “devil   fish”   because   these   magnificent   creatures   turn   violent   when threatened—“or, say, when their babies are harmed.” That makes it feel even more of a blessing when, on our third day there, a large mama whale approaches the boat. “I’m splashing when I feel her nose press up into my hand.” Though she’s “wiser and apparently more alert” than her child, “she still decides to trust us.”

1. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?

A．The writer was on a whale-touching trip.

B．The writer’s boat went down with a huge wave.

C．The baby whale splashed water all over the writer.

D．The mother whale’s skin felt as hard as a boiled egg.

2. By “does so on its own terms” (in paragraph 2), the writer means whales in San Ignacio are ______.

A．mad with too many visitors	B．ready for hands-on attention
C．restricted in swimming routes	D．enclosed in their safety zones

3. Gray whales got the name of “devil fish” from their ______.

A．strange appearance	B．inborn violence
C．surprisingly enormous size	D．fierceness in danger

4. The writer’s implied purpose in the passage is to ______.

A．popularize the knowledge of whales	B．show admiration for whales’ motherhood
C．share an experience of the sea voyage	D．advocate harmony between man and nature

10 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Should Hand Feeding Dolphins Be Encouraged?

Some tourist centers train Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins to approach beachside public sighting areas or boats by hand-feeding them small amounts of fish every day. Because hand-fed males aggressively attack each other over the food, putting themselves and nearby humans in danger, tourist centers focus their hand feeding only on female dolphins, says Valerie Senigaglia at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia

But recent studies have shown that only 38% of the calves (崽) of hand-fed wild dolphins survive to three years of age, which is much lower than the average 77% survival rate for wild calves in general. To better understand why, Senigaglia and her colleagues evaluated the social behavior of dolphins around the Bunbury coast in Western Australia. In particular, they observed the individual behavior and movement of 35 dolphins, including 13 that had been hand-fed using a small boat. They regularly followed each dolphin for periods lasting from 20 minutes to 3 hours for two years in a row for a total of 180 hours.

They found that hand-fed dolphins swam in relatively large groups, but more readily broke away from them to join different ones. In general, they created weak ties with other group members. “You can feel lonely in a room full of people and it’s the same thing for dolphins,” says Senigaglia. Free-swimming dolphins that are fed by hand become less socially involved with their peers. As a result, their calves may grow up lacking vital social skills-which could explain, at least in part, why they are twice as likely to die before reaching adulthood as wild calves generally.

No wonder animal right activists are calling on the practice of hand-feeding dolphins to be stopped.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________