Scanning the court, Luis pretended to pass the ball to another teammate but finally gave it to Nicholas. As Luis expected, Nicholas kicked hard and… GOAL! Just then, Devon walked up angrily. “What were you DOING there, Luis?!” he yelled. Luis rolled his eyes.
Devon started playing soccer with them weeks ago. He was nice when he felt like things in the game had gone his way. Otherwise, he would lose temper.
“Playing soccer.” Luis shrugged. “Why didn’t you pass to me? I was closer to the goal than Nicholas.” Devon yelled again.
As the group walked in, Devon continued. Luis ignored him to avoid arguing. Nicholas approached and began complaining about Devon’s yelling and disrespect. “What can you do about that?” Luis asked. Nicolas said he wanted to organize a new team without Devon. Luis was upset to hear that. Nicholas said, “It’s more fun before he started playing with us. I’ve told the other teammates. They agreed.”
Reaching home, Luis dragged his feet into his bedroom, which confused his mom. “What’s wrong?” She asked. Then, Luis told what happened to her. “Have any of you tried talking to Devon about this?” She asked. “I don’t know.” Luis scratched his head.
“Maybe a boundary could help. When playing soccer, how do you know whether someone is at the right position on the court? What’s that line called?” Mom reminded. “A boundary.” Luis murmured.
“Tell Devon whether he’s crossing a line with how he talks.” She suggested. Luis took the advice and decided to have a try.
The next day at school, Luis found Devon and told him all the teammates liked playing soccer with him but they didn’t like being yelled at by him.
“I don’t yell at people.” Devon immediately interrupted.
“You yelled at me the other day because I didn’t pass to you,” Luis reminded calmly. “And you are yelling now. If you keep yelling at your teammate, we won’t play with you anymore.”
Devon was too embarrassed to speak. “Being yelled at isn’t fun but playing soccer is supposed to be fun.” Luis said, patting Devon’s shoulder gently.
Later, during the training, Luis met Nicholas and told him what he’d told Devon.
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里作答。
“Just give him another chance, okay?” Luis whispered.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As the training came to an end, Luis and Nicholas jogged towards Devon.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. 设计简介；
2. 参赛感悟。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80个左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Tom,
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
3 . Since young children went back to school across Sweden recently, many of their teachers have been putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice, and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills.
The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether Sweden’s hyper-digitalized approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills.
Sweden’s minister for schools, Lotta Edholm was one of the biggest critics of the all-out embrace of technology. “Sweden’s students need more textbooks,” Edholm said in March. “Physical books are important for student learning.” The minister announced in August that the government wanted to change the decision by the national agency for education to make digital devices compulsory in preschools. It plans to go further and to completely end digital learning for children under age six, the ministry has told the Associated Press.
Although Sweden’s students score above the European average for reading ability, an international assessment of fourth-grade reading levels, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), highlighted a decline among Sweden’s children between 2016 and 2021.
In comparison, Singapore — which topped the rankings — improved its PIRLS reading scores from 576 to 587 during the same period, and England’s average reading achievement score fell only slightly, from 559 in 2016 to 558 in 2021. An overuse of screens during school lessons may cause youngsters to fall behind in core subjects, education experts say. “There’s clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning,” Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, a highly respected medical school focused on research, said in a statement in August on the country’s national digitalization strategy in education.
“We believe the focus should return to acquiring knowledge through printed textbooks and teacher expertise, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been checked for accuracy.” the school added.
1. Why do Swedish schools return to paper books?| A．To cater to parents’ increasing needs. |
| B．To help with children’s independent learning. |
| C．To overcome children’s addiction to digital tools. |
| D．To avoid possible decline in children’s basic skills. |
| A．Total acceptance. | B．Creative use. |
| C．Rapid development. | D．Serious addiction. |
| A．Teachers should acquire more knowledge. |
| B．Knowledge from digital tools may not be reliable. |
| C．Digital tools smooth out learning barriers for children. |
| D．The accessibility to digital sources should be improved. |
| A．Swedish Children’s Return to Paper | B．Problems with Children’s Education |
| C．Popularity of Digitalization in Sweden | D．Enhancement of Teaching Strategies in Sweden |
4 . In a world of music streaming services, access to almost any song is just a few clicks away. Yet, the live concert lives on. People still fill sweaty basements to hear their favorite musicians play. And now neuroscientists might know why.
Concerts are immersive social experiences in which people listen to and feel the music together. They are also dynamic — artists can adapt their playing according to the crowd’s reaction.
It was this last difference that led neuroscientists, from Universities of Zurich and Oslo, to study the brain responses of people listening to music. In the experiment, participants lay in an MRI (核磁共振) scanner listening to the music through earphones, while a pianist was positioned outside the room. The pianist was shown the participant’s real-time brain activity as a form of feedback. In the recorded condition, participants listened to pre-recorded versions of the same tunes.
The scientists were interested in how live music affected the areas of the brain that process emotions. In the live condition pianists were instructed to change their playing in order to drive the activity in one of these regions known as the amygdala.
The results, just published in the journal PNAS, showed that live music had far more emotional impact. Whether the music was happy or sad, listening to the pianist playing in a dynamic way generated more activity in both the amygdala and other parts of the brain’s emotion processing network.
The study was far from reconstructing the real experience of a concert, and the authors noted that the live music ended up sounding quite different from the recorded tracks, which may have driven some of the differences in participant’s brain activity. Some musical acts now attempt to recreate the real concert experience with everything but the artist — ABBA Voyage is a social, immersive show performed entirely by pre-recorded hologram avatars (全息图). But without Benny’s (a member of the band) ability to read the mood of the room, it will never quite match the real thing.
1. What caused the scientists to study music listeners’ brain response?| A．People’s preference to recorded music. | B．The important social function of concerts. |
| C．The changeable characteristic of live music. | D．The easy accessibility of streaming services. |
| A．By clarifying a concept. | B．By making a comparison. |
| C．By analyzing previous data. | D．By referring to another study. |
| A．It offers a more traditional and raw sound. | B．It engages the brain’s emotion centers more. |
| C．It fosters a sense of community and shared energy. | D．It guarantees a deeper understanding of the music. |
| A．The artists will be replaced by technology soon. |
| B．The immersive audio makes live music special. |
| C．The study recreated the experience of a real concert. |
| D．It is vital for musicians to read the audiences’ mind. |
5 . A 40-year-old man in China found his calling — teaching quantum mechanics (量子力学) on social media — after being unemployed for more than 20 years. Li Wei, from Qinghai province in northwestern China, became
Such is his popularity, he has
Photovoltaic
| A．evident | B．attractive | C．effective | D．popular |
| A．accumulated | B．told | C．urged | D．admired |
| A．listening to | B．waiting for | C．dealing with | D．talking about |
| A．needed | B．gained | C．offered | D．refused |
| A．employment | B．experts | C．information | D．applications |
| A．game | B．career | C．relationship | D．growth |
| A．left | B．saved | C．joined | D．believed |
| A．anxious | B．horrified | C．surprised | D．eager |
| A．results in | B．responds to | C．looks for | D．refers to |
| A．strange | B．reputable | C．secret | D．renewable |
| A．desire | B．tradition | C．character | D．knowledge |
| A．full | B．free | C．true | D．aware |
| A．introduced | B．expanded | C．found | D．chose |
| A．caring | B．ending | C．setting | D．calling |
| A．late | B．busy | C．good | D．easy |
It took six hours for Liu Yi to get to Tianshui, Northwest China’s Gansu province by train. He
The popularity of the dish is
Within a month, bookings for hotel rooms in Tianshui had increased year-on-year, according to Ctrip,
7 . World-famous Botanical Gardens
From botanical history to scientific discovery, here are the top picks for people to explore.
Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London, England (1840)
Located in London, Royal-Botanic Gardens at Kew are home to the world’s biggest collection of living plants. As a global resource for plant and fungal knowledge, it has more than 50,000 species of native and exotic plants, trees, and flowers on site. It is a setting rich in history that spans from royal decorations to wartime bombing, and its mission is to protect plants for the future of all life on Earth.
The Humble Administrator’s Garden, Suzhou, China (1513)
The Humble Administrators Garden in Suzhou is a great masterpiece with its attractive design and careful arrangement of natural elements. It’s centered around water features, with beautiful fountains, complex rockwork, and historic buildings surrounded by thick vegetation. The combination of these elements creates a picturesque landscape. Because of its exceptional cultural and historical significance, the garden has become a world heritage.
Parque de Monserrate, Sintra, Portugal (1789)
Monserrate is a combination of wild landscape with old ruins, formal lawned areas and lovely gardens. The garden sits on the lower slopes of the Sintra Mountains, which have one of the mildest climates in Europe, so the garden is frost-free. At its very centre is a grand palace, which has a distinctive mixture of different architectural styles. It has been the site of various buildings and gardens for hundreds of years.
Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, USA (1859)
Established in 1859, Missouri Botanical Garden is the oldest botanical garden in continuous use in North America. It is recognized internationally for its scientific research. With almost 50 themed gardens, Missouri Botanical Garden has been involved in the conservation of plants from native American regions and also from Madagascar, China and Central America.
1. Why are the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew established?| A．To collect tropical plants. | B．To conserve various plants. |
| C．To record the history of British plants. | D．To provide a shelter for people in wartime. |
| A．It highlights the waterscape. | B．It is surrounded by formal lawns. |
| C．It includes many themed gardens. | D．It shows different architectural ruins. |
| A．London. | B．Suzhou. | C．Sintra. | D．St Louis. |
8 . Self-driving cars may sound like something from a futuristic sci-fi novel. However, with advanced trials expected from 2021, they are a lot closer to reality than you may think, and they could really help you.
Connected and automated vehicles (also known as CAVs), are vehicles that could perform many of the functions of today’s human drivers in the future. Aware of the potential benefits of the technology from improving road safety and reducing traffic congestion (拥塞), to enabling greater travel independence-the U. K. government has been encouraging the technology.
“However, we won’t get there unless those designing the technology engage properly with a wide range of transport users,” said lain Forbes, head of the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.
FLOURISH, one initiative that received government backing, has helped to advance the successful implementation of CAVs in the U. K. by developing services and capabilities which maxi-mise the benefits of driverless vehicles for users and transport authorities.
The project was a collaboration between small and medium companies and large businesses across multiple industries, universities, local authorities and the not-for-profit sector, to investigate how these vehicles might benefit older adults and those with mobility-related conditions.
Mervyn Kohler, an Age U. K. spokesman, believes FLOURISH’s approach will be key to the positive impact self-driving cars have on older adults. “The project’s connectivity findings will also help the users of the future to make real-time journey decisions, responding to live information,” Tracey Poole, FLOURISH’s project manager and transport planning specialist says: “Not only will these vehicles be more inclusive; they will also be safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.”
Although safety is one of the big prizes associated with the introduction of self-driving cars, with the vast majority of collisions caused by human error, concerns about their safety are common.
The government is keen to understand the public’s view on CAVs and continues to survey public attitudes. It is also taking big steps towards establishing how our laws and regulations might need to change to support the safe use of self-driving cars.
1. What is the advantage of self-driving cars?| A．They guarantee road safety. |
| B．They remove traffic jams. |
| C．They provide more freedom of traveling. |
| D．They get over the elder’s dependence on drivers. |
| A．Awards. | B．Achievements. |
| C．Realization. | D．Characteristics. |
| A．Collisions between self-driving cars can’t be avoided. |
| B．Self-driving cars are more eco-friendly than today's cars. |
| C．There is still a way to go before self-driving cars hit the road. |
| D．People are not worried about the safety problems of self-driving cars. |
| A．CAVs: a substitute for today’s human driver |
| B．How do CAVs help people less able to travel? |
| C．FLOURISH: a new project on self-driving cars. |
| D．Could self-driving cars soon be a reality? |
9 . I grew up on a dairy farm. The particular life location to which I got assigned—“stuck” is a better word if you’ve ever been there — was a small family-owned-and-operated outfit.
I remember the Christmas when our main hired hand dropped out of the work rotation. Sixteen and the oldest of the kids left at home, I was called on to fill in. Halfway through the first day, I realized I had never noticed exactly how much that worker did. For five days I either milked or slept, fed calves (牛犊) or slept. I have to admit this gave me a deep appreciation of how hard my parents worked day in and day out for 30 years, and that understanding solidified my determination to do whatever it took to not stay on that dairy farm my whole life.
Eventually, my determination paid off. I got into college. Now, I no longer have to worry about my father’s voice yelling, “Stace, come out here! We need help!” To be honest, I’m grateful. But at the same time, I also don’t have a compelling reason to be up in time to see the beauty of a sunrise. Nor do I have the opportunity to dance with my sister in the dairy barn, work side-by-side with my dad and hear the old stories.
Now, there are whole stretches of days when I don’t feel any pressing need to even go outside. And I can go months without petting an animal or watching in amazement at their keen sense of the environment around them. Instead, I have neighbors within shouting distance but who feel like they live a planet away.
Eighteen years I lived my life on that dairy, not really knowing there were people who didn’t get up and go out and work together to get the same overwhelming tasks done day after day. Sometimes I wish I had never found out there were.
1. What did the author come to understand on her first day working on the farm?| A．She couldn’t manage so much work. |
| B．Her parents sacrificed a lot for her family. |
| C．The tasks were dull and challenging. |
| D．The work was more demanding than expected. |
| A．Lack of opportunities on the farm. |
| B．A passion for academic study. |
| C．Her dissatisfaction with farm life. |
| D．Encouragement from her parents. |
| A．Mixed. | B．Regretful. |
| C．Content. | D．Relieved. |
| A．She has become tired of her daily routine. |
| B．She misses the connections she had before. |
| C．She regrets leaving her family behind. |
| D．She has lost interest in the beauty of nature. |
10 . Overcoming barriers to exercising
If you’re having trouble beginning an exercise plan or following through, you’re not alone. Detailed exercise instructions and workout plans are just a click awav. But knowing how and why to exercise was far from enough. Making exercise a habit takes more.
While practical concerns like a busy schedule or poor health can make exercise more challenging, for most of us, the biggest barriers are mental. Maybe it’s a lack of self-confidence that keeps you from taking positive steps.
You don’t have to spend hours in a gym or force yourself into dull or painful activities to experience the physical and mental benefits of exercise.
Research shows that self-sympathy increases the likelihood that you’ll succeed in any attempt. So, don’t blame yourself too much for your current fitness level.
| A．Maybe your passion dies down. |
| B．A little exercise is better than nothing. |
| C．Expecting too much only leads to frustration. |
| D．You know there are great reasons to exercise. |
| E．All that will do is cause you to lose motivation. |
| F．You need the right mindset and a smart approach. |
| G．Many of us are struggling to get into the motionless state. |
