1 . “Anyone knows single parents who can’t afford to get their child’s hair done for school? I will braid (编辫子) it for free!”Brittany Starks wrote on a Facebook post.

She decided to offer her hair braiding services after a family friend delivered backpacks full of school supplies, clothing and shoes for Cayden and Ceniyah in early August. “At the time, I didn’t have anything for my kids to start school,” said Starks, who is in between homes and staying with her mother. “It meant so much to me.”

The unexpected gift made a big difference to Starks and her children, and it motivated her to pay it forward. Starks, who works two receptionist jobs, also braids hair part-time. “The hair-braiding process involves washing, blow-drying, and finally dividing the hair into small sections and braiding it. It also requires multiple supplies — including combs, brushes, hair jam and additional pieces of hair to weave in. It costs anywhere from $150 to $400 at a salon (美发厅), depending on the style,” Stacks explained. “But it can last for months and is a huge timesaver in the mornings.”

When she wrote the Facebook post, she assumed only a handful of people would reach out,but before she knew it, she had 35 appointments booked. Her Facebook inbox was suddenly full of messages from single parents, whose stories of hardship and financial challenges mirrored her own.

“There’s a huge need for this. I could really relate to a lot of the women who reached out, and it made me realize that what I was doing was really important,” said Stacks. “What got me the most was seeing the kids smile.” Given that there was less than two weeks before the start of school, Starks knew she needed to enlist help.

1. What got Brittany Starks to offer her hair braiding service?

A．A post on Facebook.	B．Her friend’s timely help.
C．Her mother’s advice.	D．A trip to her kids’ school.

2. What does Starks say about hair braiding?

A．It’s a bit dear.	B．It’s time-wasting.
C．It’s an easy job.	D．It’s a mother’s duty.

3. How does Starks feel about the response to her Facebook post?

A．Rather disturbing.	B．Beyond expectation.
C．Far from satisfactory.	D．Very disappointing.

4. What can we infer about Brittany Starks from the text?

A．She is single with one child.	B．She is ambitious and arbitrary.
C．She is in need of helping hands.	D．She is free from financial worries.

2 . Mangroves typically grow in saltwater along coasts. But some mangroves live in freshwater along the San Pedro Mártir River of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. That's nearly 200   kilometers   from the sea. Scientists wanted to know how these mangroves got trapped so far inland.

Carlos Burelo was among them. He became curious about these mangroves on a childhood fishing trip. there with his dad 35 years ago. Burelo saw that the roots of the mangroves grew above ground. This was different from the other trees, and it interested him so much. Today, Burelo works at Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Mexico. This biologist is part of a team that went on to discover where those mangroves came from.

Burelo's team first collected leaves from these mangroves. The scientists then compared their DNA to those of leaves from coastal mangroves. The coastal trees were growing along the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The DNA helped find the origins of the mangroves on the San Pedro Marir River. They had started along the Gulf of Mexico, some 170 kilometers away from the river. The river mangroves' DNA and their ages also contained clues about when they separated from their coastal relatives.

The team shared its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 12-More than 100,000 years ago, the world was warmer and Sea levels higher. In fact, sea levels reached about 9 meters above today's levels. As a result, land on what is now the Yucatán Peninsula flooded. That allowed coastal mangroves to move inland. When the world cooled again, the mangroves were stuck for from the coast.

“The remarkable resilience of these trees is striking,” says Burelo.“Although they normally live in seawater, they've survived all this time inland. That is incredible.”

This discovery highlights how changes to the past climate have affected the world's coastlines. It also offers a chance to better understand how future sea level rise may affect these ecosystems .

1. What attracted Burelo's attention on the childhood fishing trip?

A．A typical kind of tree.	B．A trap on the coast.
C．A fishing net in the river.	D．A team of   biologists .

2. Why did Burelo's team study the leaves of the mangroves?

A．To predict possible climate changes.	B．To find the substances they are rich in.
C．To separate them from their coastal relatives.	D．To get scientific evidence for the tree's origin.

3. What is paragraph 4 mainly about?

A．Where the team carried out their research.

B．What once destroyed the Yucatán Peninsula.

C．When the sea level became higher than today's.

D．How the sea-loving tree ended up far from the coast.

4. What does the underlined word“ resilience ”in the last paragraph mean?

A．Growing period.	B．Economic value.
C．Adaptive ability.	D．Ecological function.

3 . The Children's Climate Prize(CCP) has been given every year since 2016 to a person between the ages of 12 and 17 who has made“extraordinary efforts”to improve life on the planet for children now and in the future. Here are some of the finalists this year.

Yash Narayan

Yash Narayan,17,from   California ,the US created a smartphone app called DeepWaste. Yash realized that a lot of waste could be avoided if people had a simple system for deciding what could be recycled,and what was truly garbage. Users who download the app can use their phone's camera to quickly find out the best way to get rid of something.

Fernanda Barros

Sixteen-year-old Fernanda Barros is from Pará,Brazil,where she helped start the group Fridays For Future Amazonia(FFFA). Brazil's Amazon rainforest is seriously

threatened.FFFA is working to protect the rainforest.
Lesein Mutunkei

Lesein Mutunkei,a 17-year-old from Nairobi,Kenya started a project called Trees For Goals(T4G). It   encourages   soccer teams to plant II trees for every goal scored

(one for each player). Already,over 1, 500 trees have been planted,and Lesein is working to spread the idea further. He would really like to get the soccer group FIFA to back the idea.
Anjali Sharma

Seventeen-year-old Anjail Shama from Melbourne,Australia took Australia's Environment Minister to court in an attempt to stop a coal mine from being expanded. The case resulted in the court saying that the government had a“duty of care”to protect young people. It has inspired others to use the courts to force action on the climate crisis.

1. Who developed a mobile application ?

A．Yash Narayan.	B．Fernanda Barros.
C．Lesein Mutunkei.	D．Anjali Sharma.

2. What is Lesein Mutunkei trying to do?

A．Set up a soccer team.	B．Expand a coal mine.
C．Protect the Amazon   rainforest .	D．Get supporters for his project.

3. What do the four students have in common?

A．They are of the same age.

B．They care about our planet.

C．They are employed by the   government .

D．They have won the Children’s Climate Prize.

4 . Children are naturally curious beings.     1     Teachers and parents often find themselves making use of rewards in the form of stars, promises of high grades and wonderful careers, or threats of punishment. But what if rewards and threats aren’t the answer?

Natural curiosity is sometimes referred to as “inner motivation”.     2     And it’s easy to understand why it’s hard to study something we aren’t actively engaged with, and if we’re passionate about the information we’re digesting, it feels more fulfilling.

External motivation, things like rewards and punishment, does have its uses too. Praise and stimulation based on achieving good grades or fear of punishment has been acknowledged to motivate older students.     3     So, if it’s the case that natural curiosity is motivation for better learning, how can we stimulate that interest?

    4     Let children see their learning as their own thing and give them a bit more choice of what and how they learn. For example, if you want to teach children to read, let them choose which book they use. Whether it’s a graphic novel, TV guide or classic literature, the aim of stimulating their appetite for reading is achieved.

Likewise, build a relationship with children as learners and listen to their negative feelings. If they are unwilling to get involved in an activity, don’t rush to use threats or rewards. Try to find out why. Perhaps it’s simply because they feel the activity boring.     5    

All in all, the answer to motivating children, especially the young ones, comes from inspiring their inner motivation. Once their inner motivation is generated, the children will be fired up.

A．The key is to allow some degree of freedom.

B．Children who see learning as fun are better at it.

C．It doesn’t have as much effect at an early age, though.

D．Then explain its value, even if it doesn’t seem appealing.

E．It’s unapparent whether they lack inner or external motivation.

F．Even top students have days when they aren’t motivated for learning.

G．But getting them to study what they aren’t interested in can be a tricky task.

5 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。续写的词数应为150左右。

When one of our regular customers named Violet entered the store where I worked, I immediately greeted her with a big smile. She wore her usual sweater and her white hair was combed in its natural wave. The only thing missing was her bright smile.

“You may remember my husband passed away two months ago,” she said. “Our grandson feels really sad without him.” Violet told me her husband had played and shared many interesting stories with their eleven-year-old grandson and they had built a very close relationship. So she was looking for something to make her grandson happy again.

We searched the store shelves for a right gift to help reduce her grandson’s pain. “What about this?” I suggested, pointing to a painting of a boy walking through the darkened forest. Violet and I stood side-by-side and stared at this painting for a long time.

“That would be perfect,” Violet said. “If only I had that much money.” I hesitated (犹豫). Though we had no discount, I told Violet that there was a special twenty-percent discount for her. “That’s kind of you, but it’s still more than I can afford,” she said with her head down. “I only have twenty dollars to spend.” We were silent for a while. Then，a thirty-something man entered the store. I greeted him and said, “I’ll be right with you.”

“No hurry,” said the man. He slowly stood behind us. “Nice painting,” he said to Violet. “Are you going to buy it?” “Well,” Violet answered and then went on to tell him her hesitation.

After listening to her story, the man said, “I’ll pay the balance.” Violet raised a gentle protest (反对). “I couldn’t let you do that.” The man said, “I simply enjoy helping people. Besides, this painting is perfect for your grandson.”

Paragraph 1：

The man reached up to remove the painting from the wall and asked me to wrap it up.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2：

I turned to the man and asked if I could help him.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6 . 一家英语报社正向中学生征文，主题是“A Person Who Impresses Me”，请你写一篇文章向报社投稿。写作要点：
1. 交代令自己印象深刻的人是谁
2. 印象深刻的原因
3. 这个人对我的影响
注意：1. 词数100左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

A Person Who Impresses Me

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7 . ________ I love best about Sichuan hot pots is that they offer a great opportunity to socialize with friends since a meal can last for hours.（用适当的词填空）

8 . Each person’s comfort food largely depends on where they come from—for a native of the UK it might be the classic fish and chips, ________ (serve) hot, salty and sour.（所给词的适当形式填空）

9 . The movable-type printing

In the Western world, Johannes Gutenberg is widely celebrated for his invention of the metal movable-type printing (活字印刷) machine, but the movable type itself was invented 400 years earlier in China.

______ by the art of seal engraving (印章雕刻), ancient Chinese people created the fixed-type engraved block printing technique around the early 7th century. The ______ played an important role in the Tang Dynasty, but its ______ were also obvious. Block engraving was an expensive and time consuming ______, and each engraved block could only be used for a specific ______ of a particular book. Additionally, a single carving ______ could ruin the whole block.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, Bi Sheng ______ the world's first known reusable, clay movable types. Single types were made and ______ out for printing certain books, and they could be used ______ for different books. Bi Sheng also pioneered (开创) the ______ of the wooden movable-type printing. His ______ were recorded by the scientist   Shen Kuo in his book The Dream Pool Essays.

About 200 years later, these skills developed fast and ______ to Korea, Japan, Vietnam and finally to Europe, advancing the development of world ______. Today, the technique of the wooden movable-type printing is still ______.   In a village of Zhejiang Province, the family tree should always be ______with wooden movable types. The printing of family tree ______ the Song Dynasty.

______, if not safeguarded, this ______ practice will soon be ______ with the popularization of the digital laser printing technology. The UNESCO has ______ China's wooden movable-type printing into the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.

1.

A．Inspired

B．Followed

C．Approved

D．Forced

2.

A．skill

B．machine

C．industry

D．block

3.

A．reasons

B．choices

C．shortcomings

D．details

4.

A．equipment

B．subject

C．item

D．process

5.

A．way

B．page

C．level

D．offer

6.

A．act

B．mistake

C．sign

D．finger

7.

A．bought

B．ordered

C．sold

D．introduced

8.

A．picked

B．knocked

C．handed

D．carried

9.

A．in general

B．time and again

C．in particular

D．never once

10.

A．challenge

B．change

C．use

D．promise

11.

A．expectations

B．situations

C．methods

D．discoveries

12.

A．adjusted

B．took

C．added

D．spread

13.

A．civilization

B．power

C．trade

D．record

14.

A．alive

B．similar

C．safe

D．simple

15.

A．filled

B．printed

C．linked

D．planted

16.

A．pushes on with

B．gets down to

C．goes along with

D．dates back to

17.

A．Therefore

B．Above all

C．However

D．For example

18.

A．traditional

B．common

C．dangerous

D．private

19.

A．repeated

B．lost

C．considered

D．got

20.

A．turned

B．included

C．pushed

D．broke

10 . Entering the main office of the Anderson Center, it's not uncommon to hear music, since the property has long served as an artists’ community.

But recently, the sounds ringing through the building began to sound unlike others. The music was from the center's art gallery, where Jarrelle Barton practices his guzheng.

Although the ancient Chinese instrument is popular worldwide, guzheng players are rare in Minnesota, and Barton is the first one to participate in Anderson's residency program, “He was chosen because of his technical capabilities, as well as his potential,” said Stephanie Rogers, the center's director.

Most kids of Barton's age are more likely to take up the piano or guitar. But as his grandmother described him, Baton is a “special person”—a little quiet, but with very deep feelings. When he first saw a picture of a guzheng, he tried to make his own out of a wooden tea tray and guitar strings. But the instrument he made was very different from a guzheng. It was light, and it didn't sound great.

Barton begged his grandmother to buy him a guzheng. She agreed, but added that he had to really practice and become a good guzheng player.

Acquiring the instrument proved less complicated than learning to play it. Barton couldn't find any textbooks in English, and the online courses he found were in Chinese too. So, he started teaching himself Mandarin (普通话). At the same time, he accustomed his body to “feeling” guzheng music.

Barton recently uploaded his videos to the social media platform Sina Weibo. They soon went viral, with viewers making comments such as “Great!” or “This foreigner can play our music.”

Music goes beyond nationality. You can learn an instrument regardless of what language you speak. You can learn any instrument you'd like and create music to share with people.

1. Why was Barton the first one to participate in Anderson's residency program?

A．His grandmother insisted.

B．He was the first to play guzheng.

C．His skills and talent were impressive.

D．He was one of the few who could play guzheng.

2. How did Barton feel when he first saw a picture of a guzheng?

A．Puzzled.	B．Excited.
C．Disappointed.	D．Anxious.

3. What does the underlined sentence in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．Music is the best way to communicate.

B．Music can be spread far and wide.

C．Music is a universal language.

D．Music can go further.

4. What is the purpose of the text?

A．To promote a music program.

B．To advertise the Anderson Center.

C．To persuade foreigner to play guzheng.

D．To introduce the great power of music.