1 . 读后续写

Crab Lessons

My son Geordi was a rather spirited boy. Very little held his attention for long. He spent most of his spare time thinking up new ways to scare me half to death. Like the time he decided to “surf” on a tiny plastic table that was meant to hold a few drinks rather than a six-year-old boy. Geordi had just begun learning about the ocean in school and was surprisingly fascinated by it. We lived in Delaware, so any discussion about the ocean usually included horseshoe crabs, which crowded our coasts to mate in the late spring.

As part of the lesson, Geordi’s teacher brought horseshoe crab shells (壳) to school for the children to touch and examine. Hearing that horseshoe crabs had been around for over 300 million years, even before the dinosaurs, Geordi thought that was officially the coolest thing he had ever heard. He could not stop talking about it for days, and I decided it was time for us to take a drive to the Delaware Bay.

As we stepped out from the car, strong wind nearly blew my poor forty-five-pound child to the ground. Being a six-year-old mischievous (调皮的) boy, Geordi saw this as an opportunity to showcase his amazing talents, which included falling down, getting up, falling down and, yes, getting up again. This, of course, was always complete with giggles (咯咯笑). The drama came to a sudden stop as Geordi spied the dozens of army-truck-looking creatures in the sand. The next sound effect was “Wow!” as his body froze and his eyes widened with wonder.

Geordi ran around excitedly, not knowing which one to check out first. He settled on a horseshoe crab that was on its back, legs waving wildly in the air, desperate for water. “Mom, look at this one!” he screamed. “He’s cool!” I pointed out the different body parts of the crab for him, and he listened quietly and absorbed the information. He said, “I really liked him. I think I will name him Spike because he had all those really cool, spiky (尖的) things on his back.” Then I picked up the crab, turned it over to its proper position and placed it at the edge of the water.

注意：
1.续写词数应为150 左右;
2.请按如下格式作答。

Geordi asked what I was doing.

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Geordi spotted many more horseshoe crabs on their backs.

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2 . 假定你是安徽省黄山国家自然保护区的负责人，为了更好地对迎客松进行日常保护，拟招聘一名迎客松守护员。请你撰写一则招聘广告发布在 China Daily上，内容包括：
1.工作职责；
2.聘用条件；
3.工作待遇。
注意：
1.词数80 左右;
2.请按如下格式做答(标题和结尾已为你写好，不计入总词数)。

Guardian of Welcoming-Guest Pine Wanted

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Please contact Miss Wang before 30 July. Inquiries are encouraged but visits declined.

Mount Huangshan Nature Reserve

3 . Who can imagine life today without an Automated Teller Machine (ATM)? They are available in considerable numbers throughout the world.

The first ATM was the brainchild of an enterprising Turkish-American inventor Luther George Simjian. When the idea of an automated banking machine struck him, he registered 20 patents before any bank agreed to give it a trial run. It is easy to assume that the inventor of such a popular machine was laughing all the way to the bank.     1     Within six months of its operation in New York in 1939, the device was removed due to lack of customer acceptance.

It was not until 1967, nearly 30 years later, that Barclays Bank, in a careful launch, rolled out a self-service machine in London, England, which proved successful.     2     The first cash machine relied on customers’ use of prepaid tokens (代币) to get envelopes with a fixed amount of cash inside.

    3     The banks’ principle was seemingly customer service. But it would be foolish to minimize the many advantages that cash machines provided to the banks themselves. By the late 1970s, the highest fixed cost for the average large bank was its branches. The greatest variable cost and loss to profits were its staff. Bank accounts swiftly recognized that self-service operations could reduce bank branch staff cost by70 percent.

Experts quickly determined that public acceptance of ATMs counted on convenience, simplicity, speed, security and trust.     4     For maximum efficiency, ATMs had to be located near public transport or in a shopping mall, not at a branch. The busier and more crowded the location, obviously, the better. Now, roughly 75 percent of all cash provided by banks to their customers comes from cash machines.     5    .

Public acceptance of deposits (存款) by machine was significantly slower than customers’ usage of ATMs for withdrawals. In general, it seems that customers sometimes still prefer and trust an over-the-counter transaction (交易) for deposits.

A．Location, in particular, was a key factor.

B．His cash machine, however, didn’t prove durable.

C．The device was relatively primitive, at least by today’s standards.

D．However, cash machines posed some interesting, unanswered questions.

E．An interesting factor was the issue of bio-statistics for customer identification.

F．Devices originally dismissed by the public are now recognized as essential institutions.

G．Soon afterwards, many other banks became admittedly champions of the cash machine.

4 . It took an ill screech owl (鸣角鸮) to teach a scientist the value of up-close-and-personal study.

In his Harvad talk, Carl Safina, an ecologist and author of Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, recalled that the chick was found dying in his backyard. Safina took it in and planned to nurse it back to health and then perform release. But the owlet's flight feathers didn't grow properly. Safina delayed the release. Over those extended months, Safina got to know Alfie in ways that moved and changed him.

“An owl found me and then I was watching ‘an owl’,” he said. “It was no longer an owl after a while, it was ‘she’ because she had a history with me. This little owl, who was with me much longer than I thought she would be, became an individual to me by that history and all those interactions.”

The bond with Alfie strengthened to the point that, when she was finally released, she created a territory with Safina's home at its center. Safina was able to spend hours each day observing her in the woods as she learned to take care of herself in the wild, met two mates, and raised chicks of her own.

When he heard Alfie calling, Safina said, he'd call back and she'd land nearby. Their closeness allowed him to learn more things about screech owls. Field guides, for example, describe two known calls but he identified six, some of which you have to be quite close to hear. The relationship also opened a window for Safina onto personality differences between Alfie and her mates.

When pointed out that his approach to Alfie—including the act of naming her—ran counter to widespread scientific practice, Safina said he wasn't concerned about violating (违反) convention, particularly if something interesting like individual personality differences among owls could be learned.

The experience caused Safina to think more deeply about humankind's relationship with nature and the kind of personal connection he was able to feel with a wild individual. “What I learned from Alfie is that all sentient (有情感的) beings seek a feeling of well-being and freedom of movement,” Safina said. “That's a guide to what's right and what's wrong to me.”

1. What do we know about Alfie?

A．She developed a close bond with Safina.

B．She was a fictional character in Safina's book.

C．She intentionally landed in Safina's backyard.

D．She was dying because of the broken flight feathers.

2. What happened after Safina released Alfie?

A．Alfie chose to stay with Safina at his home.

B．They maintained a continous communication.

C．Alfie met mates and raised chicks by herself.

D．Safina kept his distance from her to prevent attachment.

3. What did Safina achieve in his study?

A．Recording six different calls of the screech owl.

B．Identifying different types of owls by their calls.

C．Learning how to release owls back into the wild.

D．Understanding personality differences among owls.

4. How did Safina's experience with Alfie impact him?

A．He became more focused on exploring nature.

B．He initiated his commitment to wildlife conservation.

C．He developed a deep appreciation for the welfare of living creatures.

D．He decided to guide readers to distinguish between right and wrong.

5 . What’s your first memory? Whatever it is, you’re bound to treasure it. But can we actually trust them? Nothing about memory is simple. Memory is malleable. What we remember is not necessarily what happened. A memory is not a recording. It’s more like a dramatic reconstruction and one that we can keep changing without realizing it.

For any experience to be remembered, it has to be encoded (编码). This encoding is not any kind of direct translation, though. It’s a rich and complex process that creates associations and meanings. We might be remembering something very similar, but slightly changed and colored by our own sets of associations.

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus produced groundbreaking research on eyewitness testimony (证据). Her work showed that memories can easily be influenced, even after they’ve been created. For example, if two eyewitnesses talk with each other, their memories of events often change, absorbing what they’ve heard from the other one — but they won’t realize this has happened. Similarly, witnesses who are shown an image of an innocent person, can sometimes stick it onto their memory of the actual event — a process known as unconscious transference (无意识的转移). It is estimated that around 70% of wrongful convictions (定罪), later overturned by DNA evidence, are due to mistaken eyewitness testimony.

In some cases, memories can even be deliberately created and implanted. The Lost in the Mall experiment took a test group of subjects and talked to them in depth about key childhood memories while also adding an invented one — the experience of having been lost in a shopping center. It was found that between a quarter and a third of subjects not only accepted this new memory as genuine but enriched it with specific details.

Most of us have certain key memories of being a very young child. But research suggests that they’re highly unlikely to be actual memories due to the way memory is stored in the baby brain. Your precious first memory may well not be a real memory, and we’re all perhaps living in our imaginations more than we realize.

1. What does the underlined word “malleable” in paragraph 1 mean?

A．Trustworthy.

B．False.

C．Easily changed.

D．Deeply impressive.

2. Which will influence the memory of eyewitnesses?

A．Powerful DNA evidence.	B．Pictures stuck in their memory.
C．Reduced accuracy of convictions.	D．Exchanged information between them.

3. What can we learn about “The Lost in the Mall” experiment?

A．It was designed to investigate mistaken eyewitness testimony.

B．Its subjects could recall specific details of a shopping center.

C．Its subjects made believe that they had been lost in a shopping center.

D．It demonstrated that invented experiences could be fixed in one’s memory.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．The Unreliable Nature of Memory.	B．Revised Eyewitness Testimony.
C．Reflection on Sweet Childhood.	D．An Exploration of Truth and Fiction.

6 . Wall Street bankers, investors and economists have for months argued over whether a US recession (衰退) is coming. But for some Americans, the unforgiving economic pain typical during recession has already set in.

Al Brown and his wife faced a tough call in May when reviewing their weekly budget: what’s a higher priority, more food or dish soap? Based in Concord, North Carolina, Brown was the main breadwinner for his wife and their two children. Then in April, he was let go from his job as a global director of business development at software company Cascade. He’s since quit his gym membership and sold various items around his home, including a computer and yard furniture. His 13-year-old son quit the basketball team.

Brown, 37, now spends his days searching the internet for jobs or reaching out to potential connections. After filing over 600 applications, only a handful have produced interviews. That’s a far cry from the labor-market strength described in government figures.

Investors and economists have been expecting a recession since last year as the Fed raised interest rates to control inflation (通货膨胀). That caused companies to focus on profitability over growth, which meant cutting spending and reducing their workforces.

“I think it’s unlikely that I will get another good paying job with great benefits like the one I had,” McCollum, who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, said. More Americans are likely to encounter similar cases, some experts predict.

“As we go through this year, and into next year, there is still going to be this focus on trying to reduce costs, and it is going to result in more unemployment,” said Thomas Simons, a senior economist at Jefferies. “The impact of layoffs, currently concentrated among white-collar workers, will last throughout the economy through a ‘big pullback in overall spending’,” Simons said. “Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of economic output, so if more Americans are forced to cut back because they were laid off, that might throw the US economy into a recession.”

1. What are some Americans currently going through?

A．They can’t afford necessities of life.	B．They’ve lost interest in high-end gyms.
C．They are badly treated by their bosses.	D．They have difficulty making ends meet.

2. What does the author want to demonstrate through Brown’s job hunting?

A．One should try various ways to find a job.

B．American labor market is not that friendly to job-seekers.

C．Few companies are interested in middle-aged job-hunters.

D．The government provides accurate figures of the job market.

3. How do companies deal with the economic struggles?

A．By employing more workers.	B．By changing interest rates.
C．By giving priority to profits.	D．By cutting employees’ allowances.

4. Which statement will Thomas Simons probably agree with?

A．Laid-off workers tend to go into debt.

B．Lower consumption may worsen the current situation.

C．Americans will spend more to increase economic output.

D．Companies are to blame for the unemployment of white-collar workers.

7 . Medical Examination Instructions

These medical instructions are being issued as your immigration (移民) application has reached the stage where medical examination results are required.

When, who and how to complete your Immigration Medical Examination

You are required to have the medical examination within 30 days of the date of this letter; your medical examination must be performed by a doctor from the IRCC list of Panel Physicians; book an appointment with a Panel Physician in your area as soon as possible.

Once your medical examination has been completed, the Panel Physician will submit medical results to IRCC for assessment. To obtain a copy of your Immigration Medical Examination, please ask the Panel Physician at the time of your appointment.

Paying for your Immigration Medical Examination

Any costs related to the medical examination are your responsibility and are payable to the Panel Physician at the time of examination. This payment is for the Panel Physician's services and cannot be returned even if your immigration application is refused or the validity period (有效期) of your immigration medical examination ends.

Note: If you are qualified for coverage under the Interim Federal Health Program, the costs related to your immigration medical examination may be covered by the IFHP. Please confirm with the Panel Physician in your area that they are registered with the IFHP.

What must I bring to my appointment?

★ The attached Medical Report form

★Identification, including your passport if one is available (Proof of identity must include at least one government-issued document with photograph and signature, such as a passport.)

★Eye glasses or contact lenses (隐形眼镜), if worn

★Four recent photographs

★For individuals qualified for Migration Medical Examination coverage under the Interim Federal Health Program, please bring one of the following documents:

●Refugee Protection Claimant Document

●The Interim Federal Health Certificate

●Acknowledgement of Claim and Notice to Return for Interview

If available, you may be offered vaccinations (接种疫苗) by the Panel Physician.

1. After your medical examination, _________.

A．the previous health reports ought to be consulted

B．you will submit the results to IRCC for assessment

C．the Panel Physician will present the results to IRCC

D．you will surely obtain a copy of examination results by the physician

2. If your immigration application is refused, which statement is right about the costs?

A．The IFHP will cover them.	B．They cannot be returned.
C．The Panel Physician will pay in cash.	D．They will be returned if you apply.

3. Which of the following must be brought to the appointment?

A．Proof of identity.	B．The Federal Health Certificate.
C．The application form.	D．Medical examination instructions.

8 . 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。

The Monkey King, also     1     (know)as Sun Wukong, is the main character in the traditional Chinese book Journey to the West. The image of the Monkey King has been taken into the     2     (heart) of Chinese people and is one of the important symbols of Chinese culture. Because of his amazing     3     (intelligent), he gains great powers.

The Monkey King is not just a normal monkey. He is a brave, clever, wise and interesting monkey. In fact, he sometimes does not even look like a monkey. This is     4     he can make 72 changes, turning himself     5     different animals and objects.     6     (fight) evil souls, the Monkey King uses a magic stick. Sometimes he can make the stick so small that he can keep it in his ear. At other times, he is able to make it big and long. The Monkey King’s image appears     7     (frequent) in Chinese culture, not only in literary work,     8     in different entertainment forms, such as movies, TV shows, cartoons, and games.

Chinese children are excited when they see him. They are also interested in reading about him because the clever Monkey King keeps fighting to help     9     weak and never gives up. Sun Wukong has become a classic image in Chinese culture. His image     10     (represent) the spirit of courage and never giving up. At the same time, the story of Sun Wukong also inspires people to have the courage and wisdom to face all kinds of challenges and difficulties in life.

9 . In Belgium, a company called HydroVolta is improving ways to take salt water and turn it into fresh water under the Horizon-funded SonixED project.

The vast majority of the earth’s water is salt water. Only 3% is fresh water and less than one third of that is accessible, the rest being locked away in glaciers and groundwater. “We will need to treat salt water so people can drink it and industry can use it,” said George Brik, chief executive officer of Hydro Volta. “But with current technologies, desalination (脱盐) requires high operational costs. On top of that, existing technologies use high amounts of energy and chemicals.”

The basic technique now to turn salt water into fresh water is electrodialysis (电渗析), where a kind of membrane (隔膜) is used to separate salt from water. But the method has a weak point: the membrane gets dirty easily and requires chemicals and high pressure to clean. That in turn involves large amounts of energy. Under SonixED, HydroVolta has developed ultrasound technology that keeps the membrane clean in a much more efficient way.

Energy use in this field depends on pressure, which is measured in a metric unit known as bar. Existing technologies to desalinate seawater take around 50 to 80 bar, while the new desalination technology uses just one to three bar. What’s even better is that a greater amount of fresh water can now be generated. “Existing technologies waste around 60% to 65% of the seawater that’s taken in,” said Brik. “Our new technology improves the situation. If we take in 100 litres of seawater, we can produce 65 litres of drinkable water.”

HydroVolta thinks this technology will be beneficial to larger companies that generate drinkable water as well as to industrial businesses that need water to fuel their operations. Meanwhile, Brik says the new desalination technology may need a push from governments to encourage a bigger demand. “They can be the first customers,” he added.

1. What do George Brik’s words in Paragraph 2 imply?

A．Treating salt water is of great importance.

B．The world is facing a serious water shortage.

C．Better desalination technologies are needed.

D．Current desalination technologies are no longer useful.

2. What is the problem with electrodialysis?

A．It consumes too much energy.

B．The membrane is rare to find.

C．The water it produces is a little salty.

D．It requires complex ultrasound technology.

3. What do we know about the new desalination technology?

A．It takes more energy than existing technologies.

B．It produces clean water more efficiently.

C．It gives up the use of membrane to function.

D．It needs more seawater to produce fresh water.

4. Which statement will Brik probably agree with?

A．HydroVolta can solve the water crisis worldwide.

B．The new desalination technology needs official support.

C．HydroVolta has great difficulty in finding its first customers.

D．The new desalination technology is unsuited to small companies.

10 . The power of human language comes not only from the precision of its signals and the complexity of its grammar but also from its links to cognition (认知). Babies as young as 3 months have begun to link language and core cognitive capacities.

Previous work in the lab had found that for babies aged 3 to 4 months, listening to both human vocalizations (发声) (their native language) and non-human primate vocalizations (calls of monkeys) boosted cognition. It remained unknown whether all human languages would have this advantageous effect.

In a new study, the researchers considered English-acquiring 3-to 4-month-old babies’ responses to two non-native languages (German or Cantonese) — in the context of the classic object categorization task. In this cognitive task, babies first viewed a series of “familiarization” images from one object category (e.g., dinosaurs). Then they viewed two new “test” images at the same time: a new example from the familiarized category (e.g., another dinosaur; “a familiar object”) and a new model from a novel category (e.g., a fish; “a novel object”). Babies’ ability to distinguish between the familiar and novel test images, measured by their looking times, indicates whether they have formed the object category.

Crucially, babies’ success in the task depends upon the sound information that accompanies the visual images presented during familiarization. “We found that German, which is phonologically (音系地) ‘near’ to English, facilitated object categorization. But Cantonese, which is phonologically ‘distant’, did not,” said Danielle Perszyk, lead author of the study.

“Babies’ responses to the two non-native languages tested, considered in combination with their responses to English and to the sounds of monkeys，are consistent with the possibility that babies’ earliest links to cognition originate from two distinct mechanisms. Only one of them is used specifically for human speech,” she added.

When babies are 3 to 4 months old, vocalizations of non-human primates may boost their cognition by engaging another system, one not specialized for speech. However, the cognitive advantage is short-lived: only lasts for 2 to 3months. The study also provides the first evidence that babies’ increasingly precise cognitive tuning to the sounds of their native language sets restrictions on the range of human languages they will link to cognition.

1. What can we know about babies aged 3 to 4 months according to previous work?

A．They get a cognitive bonus after exposure to animal sounds.

B．They can tell human languages from those of animals.

C．They have a gift for mastering diverse languages.

D．They show no interest in non-native languages.

2. What does Paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A．An evaluation of babies’ learning ability.

B．A story regarding babies’ ability to distinguish images.

C．An experiment on babies’ ways of native language learning.

D．An object categorization experiment on babies’ cognitive link.

3. Which of the following may Danielle Perszyk agree with?

A．People may prefer certain languages at a young age.

B．Babies may adopt different systems to build cognitive links.

C．Babies’ cognitive links are dependent on their learning habits.

D．People can develop early cognitive links through familiar languages.

4. What may babies’ precise cognitive tuning to sounds of their native language bring about?

A．Improving their speech processing system.

B．Enhancing their desire to pick up new languages.

C．Limiting their cognitive associations with other languages.

D．Affecting their ability to distinguish between different languages.