1 . 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 heritage hidden in shadows

Have you ever experienced a shadow play (皮影戏)? In ancient China, it     1     (feature) numerous and vivid characters, underwent rapid transformations in the blink of an eye, and even included special effects, music and performances, without using computers.

Merely     2     (rely) on hands, the ancient Chinese art of shadow play is a tradition with a history that     3     (date) back 2,000 years, and it’s also a representative of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity recognized by UNESCO.

Dang,     4     identity is the fifth-generation inheritor of Wang’s Shadow, a family troupe (剧团) in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, is famous for making shadow puppets off     5     beaten track. Not only does he     6     (skillful) combine the traditional with the contemporary in his creations, he also pioneers approaches     7     enhancing the presentation and     8     (preserve) of this cultural heritage.

During the China-Central Asia Summit in May, Dang and his team used the puppets to illustrate female heroes from films, along with many colorful scenes and maps introducing the countries     9     (involve) in the Belt and Road Initiative. “We aim to demonstrate the excellence of our traditional culture,     10     its ability to produce remarkable creations. Once people are aware that shadow puppets can be cool, their natural desire will be to participate,” Dang says.

2 . Last week I was driving home from a funeral (葬礼) for my 21-year-old nephew. In a state of _________, I decided to stop at a store. I _________, ran inside and spent 45 minutes looking, trying to _________ the day off.

When I went to the _________, I found my wallet gone! Running out to my car, I kept _________ where it was. My heart _________ as I saw the door of my car open and things lying all over the ground. My car had been _________! Did I leave the door unlocked?

As I got closer, I saw a tall man standing there. I got _________ as no one was around. The man asked if this was my car and I said, “Yes!” He explained that he’d been in his car, _________ me, and that when I closed my car door, the __________ had got in the way, so it didn’t close.

He’d got out to __________ it for me when he saw my wallet and a credit card lying on the ground. He had stood there this whole time __________ it, making sure no one took anything.

For 45 minutes this man had just stood there, for me, a __________! If he were not such an angel, the mistake could have __________ my whole life as my driver’s license, some money, credit cards, my ATM card were all there.

I thanked him 100 times and told him he was my angel. He smiled and said, “Just __________ it on to others.”

1.

A．calmness

B．sorrow

C．worry

D．anger

2.

A．parked

B．attempted

C．sought

D．wept

3.

A．turn

B．waste

C．dream

D．shake

4.

A．store

B．checkout

C．estate

D．entrance

5.

A．doubting

B．remembering

C．wondering

D．exploring

6.

A．sank

B．softened

C．hardened

D．warmed

7.

A．torn up

B．tracked down

C．taken in

D．broken into

8.

A．moved

B．scared

C．delighted

D．annoyed

9.

A．with

B．against

C．beyond

D．opposite

10.

A．seatbelt

B．mood

C．wheel

D．accident

11.

A．lock

B．check

C．close

D．watch

12.

A．examining

B．picking

C．guarding

D．gathering

13.

A．driver

B．friend

C．consumer

D．stranger

14.

A．ruined

B．transformed

C．saved

D．spared

15.

A．push

B．pass

C．switch

D．take

3 . How to Practice Gratitude (感激) in Your Daily Life

Gratitude is a positive emotion. Learning how to practice it is an effort to remind yourself of the good in life and to show an internal appreciation for yourself and others.     1    . Whichever exercise you do, it’s vital to remember the elements of gratitude: the awareness of the good things, expressing gratitude to yourself and giving thanks to people you’re grateful for.

Create a gratitude list. The intense stress of life can get you so caught up that we may fail to recognize the positive events or interactions we encounter on a daily basis.     2    . It can also help you picture the biggest and smallest moments that make your day.

    3    . Expressing your gratitude to those you’re grateful for strengthens your relationship with them. Plus, bonding with family and friends is a simple act that can help you feel gratitude for these relationships. Sharing kindness will make you feel happier and healthier. In turn, those benefits get passed along to those you most care about.

Make a gratitude jar (罐). Make the jar fun and personable by decorating it and placing it where you can always see it. Every day, write down what you’re grateful for on a slip of paper and put it in the jar.     4    . Whenever there’s a moment of doubt or sadness, return to the jar and read a few notes to remind yourself of who and what is good in your life.

In conclusion, engaging in daily gratitude exercises can make a great difference. Showing gratitude helps you connect with positive emotions, focus on acknowledging the good, and shift your focus to positive aspects of life.     5    .

A．Share your gratitude with others

B．Seek out opportunities to help others

C．There are several gratitude activities and exercises

D．As you fill it, it serves as a good reminder of good times

E．It is better to keep track of whatever happens in your life

F．You’ll also harvest the greatest rewards when it becomes a habit

G．Writing down the positive moments helps put life into a better perspective

4 . Most people have probably run into this problem. When you’re traveling, you want to take a photo to capture a moment, but you’re alone or your friend is a poor photographer. Now with the help of social media platforms, a “travel-along photographer” can take this worry off your list.

A travel-along photographer is like a travel companion who takes photos for you for an hour or two while accompanying you to the destination of your choice. Due to this year’s travel boom and social media, such photographers have grown in popularity.

“With social media platforms, every photographer can advertise for themselves and be seen,” said Shi Xinqi, a 22-year-old part-time photographer from Xiamen, Fujian province. In the past month, Shi has photographed over 30 clients. Rui Changchang, 27, agrees. Social media platforms help him be seen and find what he has been looking for over the years.

Rui used to be a fashion photographer for celebrities, but he didn’t feel the fundamental joy that he thought photography should create. From the lighting and clothing to the professional models, everything was from an assembly line. Now, he’s a full-time photographer who spends most of his time at Universal Studios in Beijing. “It’s very fascinating to help complete strangers become comfortable in front of the camera and capture a joyful moment for them.” Rui believes that capturing connections between people is what makes photos so touching.

But this is not a one-way service. When photographers capture these moments for their customers, they also learn something about themselves. “Most of my customers are women. I often describe them as the ‘beauty and power of women’,” said Shi, relating one experience with a customer in her 30s. Shi asked her if she had any regrets in her life—to which she replied that she had none. “That woman was so confident and determined. She helped relieve my anxiety about aging.” said Shi.

However, this booming industry also has a dark side. For travel-along photographers, there are no industry standards or measures to ensure the rights of all parties. Even though the photographers are from the same city, their pricing is dramatically different.

1. What does a travel-along photographer mainly do?

A．Run social media platforms.	B．Take worries off a traveler’s list.
C．Take pictures of a traveler along the way.	D．Accompany a traveler to the destination.

2. How is paragraph 4 developed?

A．By drawing conclusions.	B．By giving a definition.
C．By listing examples.	D．By making a contrast.

3. What does paragraph 5 intend to tell us?

A．The services offered by the photographers.	B．The benefits enjoyed by the photographers.
C．The moments captured by camera.	D．The communication promoted by customers

4. What is the author’s attitude towards the industry?

A．Favorable.

B．Objective.

C．Indifferent.

D．Negative.

5 . By flying in silence, the owl (猫头鹰) holds a deadly advantage over its prey (猎物), which is thought to have no idea of its hunter’s approach until its final moments.

Researchers have spent more than 80 years trying to solve the mystery of how owls, unique among birds, slice through the air creating just a whisper of audible (听觉的) disturbance. They hope to make use of the findings to reduce the noise generated by aircraft wings, fans and wind turbine blades (涡轮机叶片).

Extensive progress has been made, including developing innovations that have reduced noise from a wind turbine by as much as ten decibels (分贝), the difference between passing car and a passing truck, according to the authors of the study, Justin Jaworski and Nigel Peake.

However, in the study, published in the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, they conclude that “the primary barrier to the design of owl-inspired technologies remains the lack of understanding of the essential physics of silent owl flight”. The slight swoosh (嗖) made by an incoming barn owl is below the reach of human hearing until the bird is just under one metre away, laboratory measurements have shown.

In 1934, Robert Rule Graham, a British bird enthusiast and pilot, noted three structural aspects of owl wings that may help to explain their quiet approach: an unusual “comb” structure projecting from the wing’s leading edge, a soft layer of downy feathers that covers most of the wing and a ragged fringe (外围) of feathers that line the trailing wing edge. His theory is widely cited (引用).

Some researchers found that many larger owl species, such as the barn owl, can continuously track their prey in flight by hearing alone, meaning that any aerodynamic noise does not interfere with their tracking ability. When an aeroplane lands, much of the noise comes not from its engines but from the flow of air rushing around it. The ragged, feathered fringes of the owl’s wings may help to reduce the noise.

1. What is the purpose of the researchers’ study on owls?

A．To understand the flying techniques of owls.

B．To increase the flying speed of aircraft.

C．To help hunters catch their preys with ease.

D．To put the secret of owls’ quiet flight to use.

2. The underlined part in paragraph 3 is used to ______.

A．compare the noise of cars with that of trucks

B．illustrate the great achievements of the research

C．show the striking difference between trucks and cars

D．explain there is still a long way to go in reducing noise

3. What is the major difficulty in designing owl-inspired technologies?

A．Lacking the source of inspiration.

B．Limited sense of hearing of human beings.

C．Failing to understand how owls fly silently.

D．Blindness to the structure of owls’ wings.

4. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．Owls don’t move their wings when hunting for their prey.

B．The flying barn owl can follow their prey just by hearing.

C．Much of the plane’s noise comes from its engines when landing.

D．The feathered fringes of the owl’s wings generate the flow of air.

6 . Visitors won’t find many straight rows in the organic garden at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, California. Sometimes the beds look like hearts, eyes, question marks or a rainbow. And then there’s the lovely drainage ditch (水沟), called the “Middle River,” which laughing, muddy students carved right down the center of their one-acre land.

As he looks around, Kelsey Siegel, the young teacher in charge of the garden, can’t help but smile. “So many of the youth we work with have grown up in front of TV and video games; they haven’t really had this experience of playing in the mud and water,” he notes. The schoolyard farm “fills in something that’s missing in their lives.”

Before they planted their garden five years ago with the help of highly-praised chef Alice Waters, few of the students at this multicultural Northern California school had even tasted vine-ripened (藤熟的) tomatoes, let alone raised them seedlings. Teachers worried that some children weren’t eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables at home, and the school wasn’t much help either: Like many state campuses, King replaced its hot-meal cafeteria years ago with a more cost-effective outdoor “snack-shack (小吃棚).”

For Waters, the founder of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant, the thought of children having to rely on such reheated junk — right in her own backyard — was too much to stomach. The small, visionary (有远见卓识的) woman is widely regarded as the Julia Child of organic cuisine in America, the person who’s taught millions the joy of cooking simple dishes with locally grown, chemical-free produce. Waters remembers poking (戳) at mystery food in her school cafeteria as a kid. But today, she says, the spread of vending machines and fast food in America’s schools has become downright evil. “What is it, one in three kids is overweight now? It’s just horrifying,” she sighs, drinking mineral water at a quiet table downstairs in her hugely popular restaurant, about a mile from the King campus “I don’t know what has to happen before we wake up.”

1. What does paragraph 1 highlight?

A．Students’ creativity in farming the schoolyard.

B．Students’ knowledge of building the schoolyard.

C．The strange look of the organic garden.

D．The nice environment of the organic garden.

2. The garden has a(n)______ impact on students.

A．unnoticeable

B．predictable

C．modest

D．far-reaching

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Waters preferred fast-food to her school’s mystery food.

B．Waters is indifferent to what is happening to children.

C．Waters has taught people to grow organic plants.

D．Waters is deeply concerned about students’ diet and health.

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

A．Field of dreams	B．Garden of pleasure
C．Junk-free restaurant	D．Cost-effective campus

7 . Guernsey International Poetry Competition — Poems on the Move

Your poem could be on show in 2024. Winning entries are displayed in two stages: 21 bus poems will be chosen, and the top 9 of these will take part in a second, larger exhibition, first at Guernsey Airport, then all over the island.

How to enter

·Online by completing the online entry form and payment, at www.poemsonthemove.com.

·By email: PotM@guernseyliteraryfestival.com .

·By post: Poems on the Move 2024, Guernsey Literary Festival, PO Box 174, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK,GY1 3LG.

Fees

·Entries are £4 per poem or 3 poems for £10.

·Fees are not refundable.

·Young People’s Poetry: Aged 11-17, entries FREE

Rules

·Entries must be no longer than 14 lines and must be typed and fit on a single A4 page.

·Please do not write your name or age on the same sheet as your poems.

·Enter each poem on a separate page and enclose another separate sheet with your name, address, telephone number, email address, plus the title(s) of your poems.

·Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must never have been published, self-published, published on any public website or broadcast, nor winning or placed in any other competition.

·Closing date for receipt of entries: February15, 2024

The prize is open to anyone except those involved in organizing the competition. Winners will be contacted by March 5, 2024. Winning poems will be shown on Guernsey buses, and 9 of these poems will become part of the Poems on the Move exhibition, for no less than six months.

1. What should entrants do?

A．Show their poems on the bus.	B．Deliver their poems in person.
C．Start entering after February 15, 2024.	D．Have the poems typed as requested.

2. What is expected of the entries?

A．They should be original.

B．They must be over 14 lines.

C．They should be around two pages long.

D．They must be published works on any site.

3. Who is not entitled to the prize?

A．A young man aged 16.	B．A poet involved in the competition.
C．A writer organizing the competition.	D．A teacher writing a poem.

8 . We are all failures, sometimes. The emotional attack that follows failure can hang over you, if you think about it for a long time.     1     Here’s how to deal with failure in a more positive way so you can move on to your next challenge with renewed determination.

Listen to your emotions.     2     Focusing on your emotions, rather than making excuses for your failure, might actually help you learn from the experience. In turn, it will contribute to your putting more effort into a second attempt.

    3     The opinions of others might only multiply or confuse your feelings surrounding a failure. In fact, in many situations, only you know the full truth. If you can close your ears to others’ misinformed ideas, you’ll come to terms with failure more quickly and peacefully.

Lower the bar and be practical.     4     This feeling can lead to a negative cycle where your confidence and motivation start to decrease. Super-slim stars with smooth, glowing skin that wear fancy dresses only exist in the movies. This is not real life. Consider your own journey and ask yourself: Have I really failed here? Of course the answer is NO. What you need to do is change your mindset.     5     You might find these smaller goals bring about more wins to celebrate along the way.

A．Respond to failure in a more positive way.

B．Avoid those who are quick to judge your situations.

C．If you set unrealistic goals, you may often feel disappointed.

D．Your friends can be quick to take sides and offer unhealthy remarks.

E．This means admitting your feelings and sitting with them for a moment.

F．Concentrate on taking small, practical steps to improve an area of your life.

G．On the other hand, forgetting it may lead you to miss out on vital life lessons.

9 . The change caused by increased scientific funding during the 20th century is remarkable. Thomas Edison electrified the world from his industrial lab at Menlo Park, and the Carnegie Foundation was the major supporter of Edwin Hubble. Advances in science during the Second World War—from the development of radar to the atom bomb — encouraged governments and companies to increase their funding.

However, a growing amount of work shows that the reward has fallen even as more money is spent on research. One explanation for this is that the way science is funded is out of date. The rate at which funding applications are approved has fallen. Two-fifths of a top scientist’s time is spent on things other than research, such as looking for money. Risky ideas are often put aside. It is time to make another change.

The first step is to try new things. More money could fund promising people rather than specific projects, encouraging researchers to take risks. Countries should also learn from the best practices of others. American funders give over three times more to science than the European funders do. Europeans might benefit from learning from others’ practices.

More important still is to find ways to measure what is working and what is not, and then adapt accordingly. Governments might consider appointing leading scientists or chief economists to do the data analysis in various scientific fields. One interesting idea is to keep a close eye on the projects that they do not fund, and track how they perform.

None of this will be easy. Scientific funders say they want to experiment, but they also face pressure to support research that can be easily explained, to keep politicians happy. In some cases more money may be the only solution. Still, the economic returns to research are so large — at least ten times the original investment — that fixing the system is well worth the effort. Like science itself, the way of funding it must also progress.

1. Why does the author mention Thomas Edison in Paragraph 1?

A．To praise the inventor’s achievement.	B．To explain the change with examples.
C．To compare scientific breakthroughs.	D．To transform the funding for science.

2. What can we learn from Paragraph 2?

A．Most scientists are devoted to research.	B．Funding for research is less rewarding.
C．Funding applications get fast approved.	D．Scientists should look for more money.

3. What does the author suggest funders do?

A．Support people with risky ideas.	B．Invest money in specific projects.
C．Analyse the data to earn money.	D．Let go of the unfunded projects.

4. What is the author’s attitude toward another change in science funding?

A．Unclear.

B．Negative.

C．Doubtful.

D．Approving.

10 . What will happen in the speakers’ company?

A．The office building will change.

B．Many employees will lose their jobs.

C．All employees will earn more money.