4 .

A．Husband and wife.	B．Father and daughter.
C．Manager and secretary.	D．Salesman and customer.

7 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well occurring. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality (道德) and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.

Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles shows a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries (铅酸电池), containing almost 300 pounds of lead (铅) in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leaks into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable (高利润的) but deadly business.

Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an unexpected scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare cause one of the biggest environmental problems in the world yet receives little attention.

The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5.5 million people per year, making it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is heavy, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive (认知的) effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.

But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that can be resolved through financial investment (财政投入). Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the unpleasant effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.

1. How does the author describe the lead problem in paragraph 2?

A．By listing some numbers.	B．By analyzing hidden causes.
C．By making an interesting comparison.	D．By explaining its working principle.

2. What can we learn about lead’s harm from the text?

A．Lead enters poor countries in one way.

B．Lead leaking has been avoided in all the countries.

C．Lead will definitely not harm anymore.

D．Lead poisoning may make poor societies poorer.

3. What can be done to solve lead poisoning in developing countries?

A．Fixing these used batteries.	B．Reducing the cost of recycling lead.
C．Ignoring the illegal use of lead.	D．Putting certain effort and money.

4. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

A．The Impacts of Lead Poisoning on Man.

B．The Global Lead Poisoning Problem.

C．The Ways to Solve Lead Problem.

D．The Benefits of Using Electric Vehicles.

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. advances       B. automation C. combed   D. comprehensive E. filled F. generated   G. modest     H. prior     I. thinned     J. underlie     K. unearth

Does technology replace more jobs than it creates? What is the net balance between these two things? Until now, that has not been measured. But a new research project led by MIT economist David Autor has developed an answer, at least for U.S. history since 1940.The study uses new methods to examine how many jobs have been lost to machine     1    , and how many have been generated through “augmentation(增强),” in which technology creates new tasks. Overall, the study finds, and particularly since 1980, technology has replaced more U.S. jobs than it has     2    .

“There does appear to be a faster rate of automation, and a slower rate of augmentation, in the last four decades, from 1980 to the present, than in the four decades     3    ,” says Autor.However, that finding is only one of the study’s     4    .The researchers have also developed an entirely new method for studying the issue, based on an analysis of thousands of U.S.censusjob categories in relation to a(n)     5     look at the text of U.S. patents over the last century. That has allowed them, for the first time, toquantifythe effects of technology over both job loss and job creation.

The study finds that overall, about 60 percent of jobs in the U.S. represent new types of work, which have been created since 1940.To determine this, Autor and his colleagues     6     through about 35,000 job categories, tracking how they emerge over time. They also used natural language processing tools to analyze the text of every U.S. patent filed since 1920. That allowed them to     7     links between new technologies and their effects on employment.

From about 1940 through 1980, for instance, jobs like elevator operator and typesetter(排字工人) tended to get automated. But at the same time, more workers —    8     roles such as shipping and receiving clerks, buyers and department heads, and civil and space engineers.  From 1980 through 2018, the ranks of cabinetmakers and machinists, among others, have been     9     by automation, while industrial engineers, and operations and systems researchers and analysts, have enjoyed growth.

Ultimately, the research suggests that the negative effects of automation on employment were more than twice as great in the 1980-2018 period as in the 1940-1980 period.There was a more     10    , and positive, change in the effect of augmentation on employment in 1980-2018, as compared to 1940-1980.

9 . 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 the fall of 1903, O. Henry was living in a room at the small Hotel Marty in New YorkCity. He had published a few stories in local magazines, but was still relatively unknown when editors at the New York World newspaper sent a young reporter     1     (track) down this mysterious writer. By the next day, O. Henry had an agreement with the newspaper to write one story a week for the magazine section of their Sunday edition. The World had     2     (large) daily circulation in the world, and O. Henry’s stories about New York life became immensely popular. By the time he left the newspaper after less than three years, O. Henry     3     (establish) his reputation as a gifted storyteller and master of surprise endings.

O. Henry was the pen name used by William Sydney Porter, who was born in North P. Carolina. At the age of twenty, he moved to Texas,     4     he held a variety of jobs, eventually becoming a bank teller. He married and became a reporter and columnist for the Houston Post. After a few years, his wife     5     (diagnose) with a serious infectious disease, and he was accused of illegally taking the money of the bank where he worked. Some people have claimed     6     he was stealing money to help pay his wife’s medical bills. O. Henry fled to Central America, but his wife was too ill to accompany him. Months later,     7     her worsening condition, he returned and turned himself in to the police. His wife soon died, and O. Henry spent three years in prison in Ohio. It was during his time in prison that he began writing the stories that would make him famous. W. S. Porter emerged from prison     8     O. Henry.

In 1902, O. Henry moved to New York City and started trying to sell his stories. In a few years his luck changed for the better, and his position with the New York World helped make him a     9     (celebrate) author. He published more than three hundred stories and gained worldwide acclaim. O. Henry’s stories are known for their plot twists and surprise endings. In fact, O. Henry’s own life ended with a “twist”—his funeral was somehow scheduled in the same church at the same time as someone else’s wedding! The O. Henry Award     10     (honor) the authors of the best stories printed each year in American magazines.