1 . TikTok has many clever tips and tricks to make life a little easier. From creative advice to practical skills, there is something for everyone on the video sharing App. Many of these methods have left viewers open-mouthed at their simplicity or scratching their heads as why they hadn’t thought of them first. But to save you some boring scrolling (滚屏), we have made a list of the best TikTok life tips in 2021. Ready to be impressed?

Chop onions

Chopping onions is an emotional experience or, at least, it looks it. The vegetable can make us tear up, and salty liquid flowing down your cheeks is never a stylish look. However, a woman created a makeshift protective gear out of a hooded sweatshirt (连帽运动衫) and a pan cover. Next step, New York Fashion Week.

Clean car headlights

It is vital that your cars headlights stay in good working order so as to keep you safe. If yours are fogged up, just use a lemon and some baking soda. Many netizens have claimed that this method can save them some serious cash.

Bathe your dog

If your dog hates having a bath, why not try peanut butter? While this one may seem ridiculous, one TikTok video has shown it is effective. In the clip the pet can be seen licking it off the side of the tub, as the owner cleans his fur. “I don’t even know I am having a bath. All I know is peanut butter,” the caption (字幕) reads.

1. What can we infer from the first TikTok life tip?

A．Chopping onions can make you upset.

B．You can find the protective gear in New York.

C．The makeshift protective gear is creative.

D．It’s stylish to have tears flowing down your cheeks.

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A．The tips and tricks sound easy but are difficult to apply.

B．You can use a lemon and some baking soda to bathe your dog.

C．Cleaning car headlights with a lemon and some baking soda is economical.

D．The author finds bathing a dog with the help of peanut butter ridiculous.

3. What’s the author’s purpose in writing this passage?

A．To analyze the reasons why people like TikTok.

B．To share some clever tips and tricks found on TikTok.

C．To come up with some practical suggestions on TikTok.

D．To call on people to share more tips and tricks on TikTok.

2 . 阅读下列短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Pico Island, the second largest of the volcano-born Azores, is one of the most hard-won wine regions in the world. By the 19th century, Pico’s wine industry was at its peak,     1     (produce) three native white grape varietals: arinto dos Azores, verdelho and terrantez do Pico. But it wasn’t long before disease and desertification     2     (destroy) most of the island’s vineyards, nearly putting an end to its wine production. But some of Pico’s winemakers regrouped, centering their operations around the village of Criacao Velha,     3     high-quality grapes could still be grown.     4     only around 10 percent of Pico’s original vineyards have been restored (恢复), the appellation of origin has earned some of the country’s top wine honors.

3 . 阅读下列短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Susana Vazquez-Torres is a fourth-year graduate student at the University of Washington who wants to someday invent new drugs     1     neglected diseases.

Lately, she     2     (think) a lot about snake bites: Around a hundred thousand people die each year from snake bites, according to the World Health Organization—and yet, she says, “the current therapeutics are not safe and are very expensive.”

Part of the problem is     3     developing new drugs for things like snake bites has been a slow and laborious process. In the past, it might have taken years to come up with a promising compound.

4 . 阅读下列短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Technology has become an integral part of our lives, and its impact on education cannot     1     (ignore). While some people may be skeptical about the role of technology in education, there is no denying that it has brought about several positive changes.

One of the most significant advantages of technology in education is the ability     2     (personalize) learning. With the help of technology, educators can tailor their teaching methods to the needs and learning styles of individual students. For example, online learning platforms can provide students with personalized learning paths based on their progress and     3     (perform).

5 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。请在答题卡指定区域作答。

Millions of people over the age of 65 have been diagnosed with depression, and many more could be suffering. There are varied factors. Older people are much more likely to be alone, socially isolated or feel a general lack of purpose. Sometimes older people have a much more difficult time admitting mental health issues.

Early memory loss often causes depression, which can in turn make memory loss worse. A patient with early memory loss and depression really needs to be treated for the depression to slow the memory loss. A mood change also can be a sign of depression. If a previously calm person becomes increasingly bad-tempered, or a previously clean person no longer bothers to shower, that person should be judged again.

Older adults see depression as a weakness and tend to be annoyed by a diagnosis of depression. Therefore, don’t tell people of an older generation that you think they may be depressed. Tell them you’re worried about their health. Tell them they seem to be out of sorts, or seem tired, or unhappy. Say you just want to check with the doctor to see what’s going on. Once you’ve used physical symptoms to get that person to agree to a check-up, mention your fears to the doctor and allow the doctor to approach the subject of depression with the patient.

If a parent or an older loved one has been diagnosed with depression, the first thing people should do is be aware that diagnosis is not easily treated. The initial treatment may not be effective. Therefore, patients and family members should be prepared to try different ways of dealing with the depression. It’s also important to encourage patients to stick with treatment — even if they start to feel better.

1. What factors might lead to older people’s depression besides early memory loss?
_________________________________________________________________________
2. Why do patients with early memory loss and depression really need to be treated?
_________________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
People diagnosed with depression can reduce their treatment once they start to feel better.
_________________________________________________________________________
4. What will you do if you notice that one beloved elderly uncle of yours is obviously depressed? Why?
_________________________________________________________________________

6 . Customer service refers to the way that companies behave towards their customers.     1    However, many a time organizations don’t focus on customer relationship management, and that’s what makes customers angry, which is one of the reasons why companies lose their customers.     2    

First of all, you need to realize the great value of the customers. It’s they who are the boss, and it, s because of them that you get your pay checks. So do take your customers seriously.

    3     You need to ask the customers the right kind of questions and think of the possible solutions which you can provide. Understand how they feel according to a particular situation, their body language, tone of voice and words they speak. Never make assumptions and think that you know what the customers want.

Making customers feel they are important is an excellent way to serve them better.     4     The best way to do that is using their first name and finding ways of praising them in a sincere way.

In addition, there are some other skills which will help you in serving your customers better. For example, once you finish solving the problem for the customers, before ending the call, always remember to ask if there is anything else you can do for them. End the call with a “thank you”. If the customers are angry, let them express their anger completely.    5     Once they’ve finished speaking, try to calm them down by apologizing.

In a word, always remember that if the customers remain happy, you’ll be in business.

A．Treat customers as individuals.

B．Never interrupt or start speaking until they’ve finished.

C．You can bring in as many new customers as you want.

D．So customer service is important and you should know how to improve it.

E．Finding out the needs of the customers is another important customer service tip.

F．More companies are finding that their customer service should not be limited to stores.

G．It’s the quality of service that determines whether the customer remains with the company.

7 . Supermarkets have long been suffering as one of the thinnest-margined businesses in existence and one of the least-looked-forward-to places to work or visit. For more than a decade, they have been under attack from e-commerce giants, blamed for making Americans fat, and accused of contributing to climate change.

Supermarkets can technically be defined as giants housing 15,000 to 60,000 different products. The revolutionary idea of a self-service grocery, where people could hunt and gather food from aisles rather than asking a clerk to fetch items from behind a counter, first came about in America. There is some debate about which was the very first, but over the years a consensus has built around King Kullen Supermarket, founded in New York in 1930.

For some 300 years, Americans had fed themselves from small stores and public markets. Shopping for food involved mud, noisy chickens, clouds of flies, nasty smells, bargaining, and getting short-changed. The supermarket imitated the Fordist factory, with its emphasis on efficiency and standardization, and reimagined it as a place to buy food. Supermarkets may not feel cutting-edge now, but they were a revolution in distribution at the time. They were such strange marvels that, on her first official state visit to the United States in 1957, Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ insisted on an impromptu (即兴的) tour of a suburban-Maryland Giant Food.

The typical supermarket layout has barely changed over the past 90 years. Most stores open with flowers, fruit and vegetables at the front as a breath of freshness to arouse our appetite. Meanwhile, they keep the milk, eggs, and other daily basics all the way back so you’ll travel through as much of the store as possible, and be tempted along the way.

In the early days, as the supermarket multiplied, so did our suspicion of it. We have long feared that this “revolution in distribution” uses corporate black magic on our appetite. The book The Hidden Persuaders, published in 1957, warned that supermarkets were putting women in a “hypnoidal trance (催眠恍惚状态),” causing them to wander aisles, bumping into boxes and “picking things off shelves at random.”

1. What problem have supermarkets been facing?

A．They are actually on the way to shutdown.

B．They have been losing customers and profits.

C．They are forced to use e-commerce strategies.

D．They have difficulty adapting to climate change.

2. What does the passage say about the idea of a self-service grocery?

A．It was put forward by King Kullen.

B．It originated in the United States.

C．It has been under constant debate.

D．It proves revolutionary even today.

3. What have people long feared about supermarkets?

A．They use tricky strategies to promote their business.

B．They are going to replace the local groceries entirely.

C．They apply corporate black magic to the goods on display.

D．They take advantage of the weaknesses of women shoppers.

8 . About a dozen women have gathered as their instructor guides them through the moves. “Backstroke!” Jean Bailey directs from her chair, raising her arms high, as the women of Elk Ridge quickly begin arm rotations. Everyone puts in top effort.

Bailey, who is 102, has been teaching them four times a week in the hallway of the second floor for about three years. “When I get old, I’ll quit,” said Bailey. Some of her regulars have arthritis (关节炎) that limits their movements, but they can do the stretching exercises comfortably and benefit from them, said Bailey, who herself often uses a walker.

“After attending the class, we’ve gotten pretty close up there on our floor. One of us would do something for anybody. We really keep track of each other,” Phyllis Black, 87, said. She lives down the hall from Bailey; if she skips them, she feels stiff. “She’s a very nice neighbor, and she’s a good friend also. She’s very talented.”

When her children were young, Bailey became a florist (花匠) — a practice she still enjoys as a hobby. She buys artificial flowers and makes bouquets (花束) for the clubhouse and some residents. Laura Stuart calls her the “queen bee”. “She brings her expertise in floral arrangements and is always doing beautiful arrangements,” Stuart said. “She brings that to us, and it’s just a blessing that she’s still here with us to even do such a complex type of floral arrangement.”

At Elk Ridge, residents can participate in fitness activities like a walking club, tai chi and working out in a fitness room. But Bailey’s ladies seem to prefer her class because of her warm and fun personality, and the gentleness of the stretches for people who have mobility challenges, says Sean Tran, operations director at Elk Ridge. “More than anything, her general outlook on life…is just remarkable,” he said about Bailey. “She’s the nicest, most thoughtful, caring person that I probably ever met. Nothing is going to stop her,” Tran said. “She’s going to keep going, no matter what. And others look at her and think: ‘If she can do this at 102, I can do this at my age, whatever it is.’”

1. What scene does the first paragraph describe?

A．A game practice.	B．A dancing session.
C．A swimming training.	D．A fitness class.

2. What is implied in Phyllis’s words about the learners?

A．They have deepened the women’s friendship.

B．Some women often skip the exercise classes.

C．Old women are gifted in exercise.

D．Some attendees feel stiff after the classes.

3. What does Laura think of Bailey?

A．She has a hobby of growing flowers.

B．She is expert at arranging flowers.

C．She is a good florist.

D．She sells man-made flowers to others.

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Bailey organizes various activities,

B．Bailey makes her attendees stretch gently.

C．Bailey inspires other people to exercise.

D．Bailey remarks on the life of others.

9 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。

Just as noise pollution negatively impacts human health, it also affects wildlife. It can affect animal communication, their abilities to find food and impact where they live. A recent study published in Biology Letters found that human-created noise is affecting a wide range of animals. Noise pollution is caused by cars, trucks, airplanes, ships, factories, industrial activities and sounds from cities, among others. Researchers found that wildlife in many different land and water ecosystems showed significant responses to human-created noise.

For example, bats use ultrasonic sound waves to get around and to find food. However, noise pollution affects this and causes them to spend more time and energy locating their food source. Shipping lanes in the UK can be deafening to harbor seals, and noises from ships are seriously impacting killer whales ability to find food and avoid potential dangers, according to episode 2 of CBC s Killers: J pod on the brink (边缘). And it’s no secret that many human-created conditions, like noise, are changing the behavior of birds. You may be surprised to learn that plants are also impacted, since pollinators (传粉昆虫) often relocate to quieter areas.

Not unlike the impact of light pollution on insects, noise pollution is causing change. It can change the types of species living in many different ecosystems, which in turn impacts the functions of these areas, according to The Guardian.

The good news is that if noise is reduced or simply turned off, it more or less removes the issue. The impact does not remain in the same way as other forms of pollution, like plastic or chemicals. And efforts are already underway in Canada.

BC Ferries is working to lessen the effects of underwater noise, especially along ferry routes that pass through critical habitats. WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) Canada is encouraging the federal government to increase protective measures in the Arctic. They’re also working with international colleagues to address the increase of noise in the region as a result of new shipping routes.

While these initiatives demonstrate progress, tightening rules and regulations around noise pollution is an important measure for conserving wildlife in Canada.

1. Why do bats spend more time looking for food?
________________________________________________________________
2. What is the influence of noise pollution on ecosystems?
________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Noise pollution affects animals in many ways, and compared with other forms of pollution, noise pollution is harder to deal with.
________________________________________________________________
4. Please give some advice on how to reduce the effects of noise pollution on animals. (In about 40 words)
________________________________________________________________

10 . We often think about relationships on a scale from positive to negative. We are drawn to loving family members, caring classmates and supportive mentors. We do our best to avoid the cruel uncle, the playground bully and the jerk boss.

But the most toxic relationships aren’t the purely negative ones. They’re the ones that are a mix of positive and negative. We often call them frenemies, supposed friends who sometimes help you and sometimes hurt you. But ifs not just friends. It’s the in-laws who volunteer to watch your kids but belittle your parenting. The manager who praises your work but denies you a promotion.

Everyone knows how relationships like that can tie your stomach into a knot. But groundbreaking research led by the psychologists Bert Uchino and Julianne Holt-Lunstad shows that ambivalent (矛盾情绪的) relationships can be damaging to your health — even more than purely negative relationships.

I had assumed that with a neighbor or a colleague, having some positive interactions was better than all negative interactions. But being cheered on by the same person who cuts you down doesn’t reduce the bad feelings; it increases them. And it’s not just in your head: It leaves a trace in your heart and your blood.

Even a single ambivalent interaction can cause harm. In one experiment, people gave impromptu speeches on controversial topics in front of a friend who offered feedback. The researchers had randomly assigned the friend to give ambivalent or negative comments. Receiving mixed feedback caused higher blood pressure than pure criticism. “I would have gone about the topic differently, but you’re doing fine” proved to be more distressing than “I totally disagree with everything you’ve said.”

The evidence that ambivalent relationships can be bad for us is strong, but the reasons can be harder to read — just like the relationships themselves.

The most intuitive reason is that ambivalent relationships are unpredictable. With a clear enemy, you put up a shield when you cross paths. With a frenemy, you never know whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde is going to show up. Feeling unsure can disrupt the body’s calming system and activate a fight-or-flight response. It’s unsettling to hope for a hug while also preparing for a likely quarrel.

Another factor is that unpleasant interactions are more painful in an ambivalent relationship. It’s more upsetting to be let down by people you like sometimes than by people you dislike all the time. When someone stabs you in the back, it stings more if he’s been friendly to your face.

1. Which of the following can be counted as a frenemy?

A．Your neighbour’s kid who advises you to study hard but idles away his own time.

B．Your classmate who admires your diligence at first, but doubts your intelligence later.

C．Your mother’s friend who encourages you to spend more time on homework but less on smart phones.

D．Your father’s colleague who proposes you to do a moderate amount of homework while ensuring adequate sleep.

2. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

A．Ambivalent relationships have a permanent effect on your well-being.

B．The common cause for high blood pressure is ambivalent relationship.

C．Ambivalent interactions will be more painful if it is done consciously.

D．The negative impact of ambivalent interactions is direct and strong.

3. The underlined word “belittle” in paragraph 2 probably means ______.

A．devalue

B．appreciate

C．respect

D．abuse

4. Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?

A．Some Negative Relationships Are Bad for Your Health

B．Your Most Ambivalent Relationships Are the Most Toxic

C．The Reasons for Ambivalent Relationships Are Unpredictable

D．Some Positive Relationships Are Better than All Negative Ones