| A．Excited. | B．Annoyed. | C．Puzzled. |
| A．The woman. | B．Alice. | C．His family. |
My parents were always against me owning my own pet, afraid of the mess it would make or that I would quickly lose interest in taking care of it, but we made a compromise: I could volunteer at a local pet shelter on the weekends to test my sense of responsibility and dedication. That was how I first came to volunteer at the Avondale pet shelter and—more importantly—where I met my future best friend, Chocolate.
One hot August afternoon, my boss Charlie told me that they were bringing in a young black Labrador Retriever and that I’d be its primary caretaker. An hour after our conversation and in came Chocolate—a beautiful dog with shining brown fur and amazing blue eyes. At about 3 months old, I expected him to be a lot more energetic and playful, but he immediately backed and lay down at the back of his pen (围栏).
I asked Charlie what was the matter with him. He replied that Chocolate had a genetic problem which caused him to be born with a short tail, leading potential owners to think there was something wrong with him; so the breeder felt that they had no choice but to give up the puppy to the shelter.
He was overlooked and underappreciated. I felt very angry at the thought that an otherwise healthy dog could be thrown away so easily. At the same time, I felt a deep sympathy for this dog who had been cheated out of the love and attention he deserved. It was at this moment that I resolved to give Chocolate as much love and attention as I could while working as a volunteer.
Although Chocolate was reluctant and shy at first. eventually through enough treats and play he slowly came around and warmed up to me. Soon enough, whenever I came around his pen to let him out for his turn of walks and play, Chocolate was always excited and jumping with joy.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1:
As time passed by, the connection between Chocolate and I grew stronger and stronger.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2:
One day, Charlie said Chocolate must find a home soon or he would be removed.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 . Four Wonderful Hotels in India
Vythiri Resort, Lakkidi, Kerala
Vythiri Resort has five tree houses, including the one that’s child-friendly and buried in the jungle. This 150-acre property is built around a stream, and the tree houses have been hand-made by local people using local materials. The resort has an Ayurvedic spa, a game room, a health club, and a big free parking lot.
The regular tree house for one night is CNY 1,300 for two adults and a free stay for your child. Breakfast is included in the fee.
Rainforest Resort, Kerala
If the thought of a bird’s eye view of Athirapally Falls, Kerala’s largest waterfall, appeals to you, then book yourself into the tree house at the Rainforest Resort, which hides in the Sholayar rainforest. The resort is set among seven acres of jungle. It’s not cheap, though. You can use free parking and free Internet.
A standard double room for one night is CNY1,920 with meals included for two adults and a child.
The Tree House Resort, Jaipur, Rajasthan
Situated around an hour’s drive from the city center, The Tree House Resort is the largest resort in the world of its kind. It’s located at Nature Farms in the Syari Valley. The tree houses are divided into many “nests”. Some even have tree trunks running through them. All are air-conditioned and have wireless Internet and satellite TV. Activities include jeep tours and nature walks.
A garden room for one night is CNY 820 for two adults and one child. However, breakfast is not included.
Tranquil Resort, Kolagappara, Kerala
Also located in Kerala’s Wayanad district, the Tranquil Resort is, in fact, a coffee plantation homestay. There are 13 walking trails (小路) there and more than 100 species of birds. The resort has a tree house and a 1,000-square-foot tree villa. The villa is apparently a bit expensive. The two are popular, so do book early online or by phone. Fresh coffee is served.
The prices of a tree house and a tree villa are respectively CNY 1,430 and CNY 2,100 per night. And for more than 2 guests, an additional fee of CNY 200 is required.
1. What do the above four hotels offer guests?| A．The free parking service. | B．A chance to get close to nature. |
| C．A taste of India’s traditional cuisine. | D．Interactive activities for parents and children. |
| A．It’s relatively small. | B．It’s unfriendly to kids. |
| C．It charges for breakfast. | D．It’s inconveniently located. |
| A．CNY 1,430. | B．CNY 1,630. | C．CNY 2,100. | D．CNY 2,300. |
5 . J. K. Rowling frequently shows there is magic every day. Her Harry Potter series has helped people through times of stress and depression and she is always there to deliver wise words of encouragement.
She is one celebrity who is very active on Twitter. So when a single dad named Matt Burke sent her a message thanking her for the series, she noticed. Her series had helped strengthen his relationship with his 9yearold daughter Bailey.
He included a link to his article titled Being a Broke Parent. He explained how he hadn’t found a level of financial stability that allowed him to pay bills on time and take his daughter on more activities and events. The family also doesn’t have the Internet or TV, which means there’s no “digital babysitter” and he has to rely on his own creative ways to bond with his daughter. Since he received the series, the main thing that has occupied them these days is reading books together.
Burke admits that he thought he was “too cool” for the books when they first came out and he was in his twenties, but he’s loving reading them now. “We switch off chapter by chapter reading them out loud，“Burke explains.” This not only allows her to get more used to reading aloud in front of someone, but it gets me directly involved in something she loves, and it gives me the chance to be very dramatic when I read my chapters and bring myself into the characters in the book, which has proven to be a ton of fun.”
After hearing Burke’s story, Rowling said how honored she was when Harry Potter was a part of his family’s life and offered Burke more books. Besides, people are also offering to send Burke more books as gifts. For Burke, this experience, far more than gifts, will be what he treasures.
1. Why did Burke thank J. K. Rowling according to the text?| A．She guided him how to write a good story. |
| B．She encouraged him when he was in trouble. |
| C．Her books helped him through times of confusion. |
| D．Her books helped him improve his bond with his daughter. |
| A．He has found it interesting to read the series. | B．He was too old to understand the series better. |
| C．He has chosen a better way of reading the series. | D．He hopes to play a role in the drama in the future. |
| A．Useless. | B．Normal. | C．Valuable. | D．Boring. |
| A．J. K. Rowling chooses to help improve kids’ health. |
| B．J. K. Rowling gives a magical gift to a single father. |
| C．J. K. Rowling has a deep influence on others’ growth. |
| D．Burke comes to know J. K. Rowling through her series. |
6 . Joyce Loaiza, aged 81, lives alone, but when she returns to her apartment at a Florida senior community, she often has a chat with a friendly female voice that asks about her day. A few miles away, the same voice comforted 83-year-old Deanna Dezern when her friend died. In central New York, it plays games and music for 92-year-old Marie Broadbent, who is blind and in a hospice (救济院), and in Washington, it helps 83-year-old Jan Worrell make new friends.
The women are some of the first in the country to receive the robot ElliQ, whose creators, Intuition Robotics, say it is the only device to use artificial intelligence specifically designed to help many older Americans who live alone.
“It’s interesting. You can actually talk to ElliQ,” said Loaiza. “She’ll make comments like, ‘I would go outside if I had hands, but I can’t hold an umbrella.’”
The robot, which looks like a small table lamp, has an eyeless, mouthless head that lights up and swivels (旋转). It remembers each user’s interests and their conversations, helping plan future chats.
ElliQ tells jokes and plays music. On a video screen, it provides tours of cities and museums. It leads exercises, asks about the owner’s health and gives reminders to take medications. It can also host video calls and contact relatives, friends or doctors in an emergency. But none of the conversations are heard by the company, with the information staying on each owner’s robot.
The idea of ElliQ is for a robot that keeps seniors company by adapting to their individual personality and interests, said Dor Skuler, the CEO of the company. The average user talks with ElliQ more than 30 times daily, even 6 months after receiving it, and more than 90% report lower levels of loneliness, Skuler added.
1. How does the author introduce the topic of the text?| A．By giving examples. | B．By listing numbers. |
| C．By telling a story. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．How ElliQ feels. | B．How ElliQ was created. |
| C．What ElliQ can do. | D．What people think of ElliQ. |
| A．It can lower the levels of complaints. |
| B．It adapts itself to different users. |
| C．It offers a connection between the seniors. |
| D．It can completely replace the company of the family. |
| A．AI Robot Opens a New World |
| B．AI Robot Relieves People’s Pressure |
| C．AI Robot Gets Popular with Young People |
| D．AI Robot Helps Seniors Fight Loneliness |
7 . The Giving Voice Chorus (合唱团) was created in 2014 by Mary Lenard, a former director of the Alzheimer’s Association of Minnesota-North Dakota. With co-worker Marge Ostroushko, who has taken care of a parent with Alzheimer’s disease(AD), a brain disorder that gets worse over time, Lenard set out to create an environment where people with AD and their caregivers felt supported and comfortable.
“People with AD sometimes withdraw and often are not included in the community,” she says. “Marge and I recognized that music and singing are ways for people with AD to still be included and join in life.”
In the beginning, the chorus was made up of 30 people, including volunteers from the community who helped with small tasks during chorus practice, such as helping singers find the printed music in their binders (活页夹) if they lost their place. Since then, the Giving Voice Chorus has grown to two additional choruses, with more than 180 members overall.
“We don’t do auditions, and we don’t care what AD cases you have or the stage of your disease,” says Lenard. “As long as you enjoy the experience, anyone can be part of the group. It’s a place where everyone belongs.”
Lenard says, “When we first started out, Marge and I didn’t know if people with AD were going to move away from the place where they ought to be or get upset.” But the opposite has happened. “There’s a positive change we see in people when they’re singing songs they love. They’re smiling, and there’s joy and laughter. It’s really special.”
“People with AD might have difficulty learning a new song or coming up with words on their own,” says Dr. Caselli, AD specialist at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. “But if they hear a song they’ve known all their lives, they tend to remember the words and are able to sing along. And because speech and long-term memory aren’t usually affected until late in the disease, members of the Giving Voice Chorus are likely to stay active until the last few months of life.”
1. What’s the purpose of the Giving Voice Chorus?| A．To enrich the young men’s life. | B．To raise money for the poor. |
| C．To ask people to tend to the old. | D．To help people with AD. |
| A．Stop social activities. | B．Be looked down upon. |
| C．Be cheated. | D．Get lost. |
| A．Confident. | B．Worried. | C．Curious. | D．Unwilling. |
| A．They can express themselves freely. |
| B．They can learn a song quickly. |
| C．They fail to sing a familiar song. |
| D．They can be active near the end of life. |
8 . While many of us might long to just sleep through this entire winter, humans, unlike a lot of other mammals - don’t have the capacity to hibernate (冬眠). But researchers think they have found some tell-tale marks on the fossils, which suggests that early humans may have survived the harsh winter by hibernating.
Bears have specialized metabolic (新陈代谢的) processes to protect them from this extended sleep, but sometimes this process doesn’t quite go to plan. For example, hibernators can end up with a host of diseases after hibernation if they don’t get enough food reserves before they go down for the winter. The researchers believe this may have been the circumstance of some human ancestors whose remains with deep cracks in bones were discovered in a Spanish cave called Sima de los Huesos. This deep hole is home to an incredible number of fossils, with archaeologists having discovered thousands of early humans’ skeletal remains that are around 430,000 years old and probably the ancestors of the Sima people or others.
In a paper published in L’Anthropologie, two experts argue that the fossils found in Sima de los Huesos show seasonal variations that suggest that bone growth got interrupted for several months of each year. They suggest these early humans found themselves being in metabolic states that helped them to survive for long periods of time in extremely cold conditions with limited stores of body fat.
The researchers admit the idea “may sound like science fiction”, but they point out that many mammals including primates (灵长类动物) do this. “This suggests that the genetic basis and physiology for such slow metabolism could be preserved in many mammalian species including humans," state Arsuaga and Bartsiokas.
However, Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London pointed out that large mammals such as bears do not actually hibernate, because their large bodies cannot lower their core temperature enough. Instead, they enter a less deep sleep known as torpor. In such a condition, the energy demands of the human-sized brains of the Sima people would have remained very large, creating an additional survival problem for them during torpor.
1. Why does the author mention the example in Paragraph 2?| A．To explain the special ability of bears. | B．To provide the background to the research. |
| C．To show the basis of researchers’ evaluation. | D．To discuss a new cause of hibernating disease. |
| A．They were badly preserved with deep cracks. |
| B．Their growth discontinued temporarily for some reason. |
| C．Their appearances varied from individual to individual. |
| D．They showed signs of people living in comfort in the past. |
| A．It’s quite possible. | B．It merely appears in science fiction. |
| C．It’s an exception to human genetics. | D．It solved the mystery of humans’ evolution in Europe. |
| A．They might have developed smaller brains. |
| B．Their daily sleep quality might become poor. |
| C．Their body temperature might increase rapidly. |
| D．They might suffer from life-threatening starvation. |
1. What is the book mainly about?
| A．An editor. | B．An artist. | C．A parrot. |
| A．Amy Guglielmo. | B．Brett Helquist. | C．Cezanne. |
| A．Surprised. | B．Encouraged. | C．Disappointed. |
1. Who needs a babysitter now?
| A．The speaker’s relative. | B．The speaker’s neighbors. | C．The speaker’s friend. |
| A．At a hospital. | B．At a bank. | C．At a restaurant. |
| A．In the morning. | B．In the afternoon. | C．In the evening. |
| A．Easy-going. | B．Serious. | C．Bad-tempered. |
