The snowstorm was supposed to hit the evening of Monday, Jan. 31, 2022. I was working from home, but I had to leave that afternoon and go to my office at First Nations University in Regina, Saskatchewan, so I could sign an emergency financial aid check for a student. As director of finance, I wanted to get it to him as soon as possible, snowstorm or not. Besides, I wasn’t worried. I figured I had more than enough time to make it to the office and get back home.
The route to the university takes about 30 minutes along the Trans-Canada Highway. After I finished my work, it was just past 4:30 p. m. I started heading back home.
Not soon after I left office, the snow started and it was coming down fast. Within minutes I was in a whiteout. The storm was a “snownado,” or what the TV meteorologists call a Saskatchewan screamer, because it comes in fast and so windy that it screams.
The road condition was horrible, forcing me to slow down. The windows were fogging up and getting covered with snow, so I rolled down my driver’s side window, thinking I could better follow the edge of the road and keep to a straight line. But really, I didn’t have a clue where I was or even which side of the road I was on. At one point, I don’t know exactly when, I stopped because I was afraid of driving into a farmer’s field. The Trans-Canada Highway was in between two farms, each 500 yards away, I remember. I kept the car running to stay warm and called 911. They told me to sit tight and wait things out for the night, saying nobody was coming to get me until morning, at the earliest. It was now 6:30 p.m., I had to do something for help.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
I posted my situation onto my Facebook (网络社交工具), hoping anyone might read it and help.
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“I can’t drive,” the old farmer replied, “I walked here after my son phoned me about everything.”
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1. 活动过程；
2. 你的感想。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。（答题卡上不用再写已给部分）
Dear James,
Last month, my school organized a month-long reading activity named “Classics for English”.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Does your school have similar activities? Looking forward to your sharing.
Yours
Li Hua
In the history of Chinese painting, the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties was a very important period. Gu Kaizhi, a painter of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was
Gu kaizhi was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu province in the year 344 and
As the first painter
The story of Nymph of the Luo River
Inspired by Cao Zhi’s poem, Gu Kaizhi set out to illustrate the charming nymph. His painting exhibits the soul of the poem,
4 . People always tell me I was brave to apply to medical school in my 30s. But for me, the bravest thing was to
I’d always wanted to study medicine to help release the world from sufferings but, believing I was not bright enough, I left school at 15 and didn’t return to education until my 30s.
I spent five years at medical school learning how to fix things, but after graduation, when I worked in a hospital, I soon discovered there were many things in life I was unable to
I knew I needed a solution to it, and I finally
I still work on the wards (病房) now, but as a(n)
| A．leave | B．suffer | C．hide | D．lean |
| A．For | B．With | C．Given | D．Despite |
| A．sufficient | B．tight | C．worthless | D．missing |
| A．wish | B．decision | C．difference | D．application |
| A．handle | B．recognize | C．choose | D．decide |
| A．amazing | B．essential | C．impossible | D．significant |
| A．cause | B．abandon | C．witness | D．fix |
| A．gift | B．practice | C．burden | D．luck |
| A．turned to | B．gave up | C．run for | D．figured out |
| A．wipe out | B．find out | C．hand out | D．pick out |
| A．Recently | B．Originally | C．Gradually | D．Apparently |
| A．quitted | B．regained | C．continued | D．led |
| A．seriously | B．lightly | C．aimlessly | D．sadly |
| A．expert | B．leader | C．doctor | D．volunteer |
| A．easy | B．fortunate | C．hard | D．wise |
5 . Tennis is an incredibly mental sport.
It is very easy to self-destruct (自我毁灭) when playing tennis if you let your expectations and ego get the better of you. So, simply playing the ball that is in front of you is the simplest way to approach the game, along with taking each point at a time.
That being said, it is much easier said than done.
Tennis is also about playing the big points well and understanding that not all points hold the same weight across the course of a match. Putting disappointment behind you and trying to play the next point with a positive attitude can be very difficult to do.
| A．However, being flexible is also important. |
| B．You will always have to have some form of strategy. |
| C．However, it is a key part of becoming a better tennis player. |
| D．It can bring with it a whole host of physical and mental benefits. |
| E．Every backhand shot you hit is what you throw at your opponent. |
| F．Perhaps the most obvious benefits tennis offers are the physical ones. |
| G．The scoring system in tennis means you can win more points and still lose a match! |
6 . The iPhone has become a usability nightmare (噩梦). A new one comes with 38 preinstalled (提前装好的) apps, of which you can delete 27. Once you’ve downloaded your favorite apps, you’re now sitting at 46 or more.
Like many companies, Apple has decided that there’s no need to build an easy-to-use product when it can use artificial intelligence. If you want to find something in their garbage dump of apps and options, you must use Spotlight, Apple’s AI-powered search engine that can find almost everything there.
This “innovation” of artificial intelligence is not the creation of something new but simply companies selling you back basic usability after decades of messy design choices. And these tech firms are charging us more to fix their mistakes and slapping an AI label as a solution.
Alexa and Siri have become replacements for intentional computing. They give commands into voice interfaces (接口) easily but sacrifice “what we can do” to “what Amazon or Apple allows us to do.” We have been trained to keep apps and files, while tech companies have failed to provide any easy way to organize them. They have decided that disorganized chaos is fine as long as they can provide an automated search product to sift (筛查) through the mess, something more tech, even if tech created the problem in the first place.
Artificial intelligence-based user interfaces rob the user of choice and empower tech giants to control their decision-making. When one searches for something in Siri or Alexa, Apple and Amazon control the results. Google already provides vastly different search results based on your location, and has redesigned search itself multiple times to trick users into clicking links that benefit Google in some way.
Depressingly, our future is becoming one where we must choose between asking an artificial intelligence for help, or fighting through an ever-increasing amount of poorly designed menus in the hope we might be able to help ourselves. We, as consumers, should demand more from the companies that have turned our digital lives into trillion-dollar enterprises.
1. Why does the author mention Apple’s problem?| A．As the main topic. | B．As the model. |
| C．As an example. | D．As a sharp contrast. |
| A．They are both Apple’s search products. |
| B．They help consumers make their own choices. |
| C．They have bettered the user experience greatly. |
| D．They work to the benefits of tech giants behind. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Disapproving. | C．Unclear. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．abandon using artificial intelligence |
| B．abandon using products from tech giants |
| C．recognize the nature of AI-based solution |
| D．recognize the nature of poorly designed apps |
7 . A proton (质子) is an infinitesimal (无穷小的) part of an atom.
Now imagine if you can (and of course you can’t) make smaller one of those protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look huge. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space some matter. Excellent. You are ready to start a standard Big Bang universe.
In fact, you will need to gather up everything there is, every last mote (尘埃) of matter, between here and the edge of creation and press it into a spot so infinitesimally compact (紧密的) that it has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity.
It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of packed spot hanging in a dark, boundless void (虚空). There is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no “around” around it. We can’t even ask how long it has been there — whether it has just lately exploded into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn’t exist. There is no past for it to emerge from.
And so, from nothing, our universe begins with a big “bang”. In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory “explosion” much too rapid and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes (显露出) heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. Within a second gravity is produced and then the other forces that govern physics. In less than a minute the universe is a million billion miles across and growing fast. There is a lot of heat now, ten billion degrees of it, enough to begin the nuclear reactions that create the lighter elements — principally hydrogen, helium and a little lithium (锂). In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.
1. What is the characteristic of singularity?| A．Empty. | B．Mysterious. | C．Fixed. | D．Predictable. |
| A．Gravity. | B．Expansion. | C．Nuclear reactions. | D．Elements. |
| A．the existence of the universe |
| B．the environment in which the universe is made |
| C．the speed at which the universe comes into existence |
| D．the beauty of the universe |
| A．Protons in the Universe. | B．Why Build a Universe. |
| C．The Size of the Universe. | D．How to Build a Universe. |
8 . The sunmao (榫卯) method of joinery was commonly used in ancient Chinese architecture and furniture. But when modern technology discourages many in mastering this ancient skill, Jia Jing, a junior student at Hubei Ecology Polytechnic College, offers his answer.
“It is essential to train young people in this craft,” said the 20-year-old. “Not only does it ensure the preservation of carpentry (木工) skills, but there exist delicate wooden artifacts from ancient times that machines still cannot repeat.”
Growing up in a family with a carpenter father, Jia would constantly observe his father doing woodwork and sometimes assist him. This early exposure ignited (点燃) his passion and talent for carpentry. But as a child, he couldn’t build furniture on his own. So, he conveyed this passion into building with Lego bricks at the age of 8.
“At that time, I would think before going to bed about what I would build tomorrow,” Jia recalled. “I brainstormed a framework in my mind, and the next day I would start building it.”
This hobby significantly benefited Jia’s future furniture-making skills. Before making any piece, Jia can quickly sketch a draft in his mind, which proves useful during the carving process.
When the moment arrived for Jia to head to college, he chose interior design at the suggestion of his father. Beyond his theoretical studies, Jia also signed up for school furniture-making training center. Sawing, planning, and carving wood repeatedly every day can be an extremely dull job for most young people. While other students were enjoying their college life, Jia had already learned to bear loneliness and focus on achieving excellence. “This experience not only improved my skills but also tested my character,” Jia said.
Recently, Jia’s commitment to this craft achieved a significant milestone. He was chosen as one of the candidates to compete on behalf of China at the 47th World Skills Competition in Lyon, France next year.
“If I can represent China on the global stage, I will exert all my efforts to become the winner,” Jia said.
1. Why should young people learn the sunmao method according to Jia Jing?| A．It is key to making Chinese furniture. | B．It is better than modern technology. |
| C．It exhibits traditional Chinese culture. | D．It exhibits ancient carpentry wisdom. |
| A．Arousing his interest in carpentry. | B．Assisting his father in furniture making. |
| C．Improving his carpentry skills. | D．Preparing him for his ideal university. |
| A．His leisure time. | B．His practical skills. |
| C．His theoretical studies. | D．His original character. |
| A．Making furniture against technology. | B．Preserving carpentry inside Lego. |
| C．Carving dreams in wood. | D．Continuing passion on global stage. |
| A．In Amsterdam. | B．In Brussels. | C．In London. | D．In Paris. |
| A．International support. | B．Low price. |
| C．Flexible timetable. | D．Convenient app. |
| A．pay 39 Euros for the train tickets |
| B．pay 58 Euros for the train tickets |
| C．stay on the train for around 270 minutes |
| D．stay on the train for 2 hours and 15 minutes or so |
Once when I was a teenager, my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for the circus (马戏团) . Finally, there was only one family between us and the ticket counter (柜台).
This family made a big impression on me. There were eight children, all probably under the age of twelve. You could tell they didn’t have a lot of money.
Their clothes were not expensive, but they were clean. The children were well-behaved, all of them standing in line, two-by-two behind their parents, holding hands. They were excitedly talking about the clowns. elephants, and other acts they would see that night with their brothers or sisters in a low voice.
One could sense they had never been to the circus before. It promised to be highlight of their young lives. The father and mother were at the head of the pack, standing proud as could be. The mother was holding her husband’s hand, looking up at him as if to say, “You are my knight (骑士) in shining armor (盔甲).”
He was smiling and responding in pride, looking back at her as if to say, “You got that right” . The ticket lady asked the father how many tickets he wanted. He proudly responded, “Please let me buy eight child tickets and two adult tickets so I can take my family to the circus.”
The ticket lady gave the price. The man’s wife let go of his hand, her head dropped, and his lips began to shake. The father leaned (倾斜) a little closer and asked. “How much do you say?”
The ticket lady again quoted (报价) the price. The man didn’t have enough money.
How was he supposed to turn around and tell his eight children that he didn’t have enough money to take them to the circus?
Actually we were not wealthy in any sense. So I understand how the kids would feel. I felt sorry for them.
注意：续写词数应为80左右。Seeing what was going on, my dad put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill and dropped it on the ground.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________That day my father and I went back to our car and drove home without any tickets.
