1 . Have you ever felt the need to grab a pen and start writing your thoughts on paper? Words — beautiful and fascinating. But you know what is better than putting your imagination somewhere? In my case, to win the competition for the best novelist.
That was a small tournament organized by my school annually to
I finished a long story and e-mailed it. As I
I was not accepted. I
Thankfully, a film that night — Forrest Gump lifted my
| A．advertise | B．demonstrate | C．defend | D．distinguish |
| A．speaking | B．acting | C．dancing | D．writing |
| A．beat | B．stun | C．contradict | D．dominate |
| A．answered | B．sent | C．checked | D．shared |
| A．notice | B．smell | C．taste | D．feel |
| A．Moreover | B．Otherwise | C．However | D．Therefore |
| A．abused | B．overestimated | C．enhanced | D．urged |
| A．moody | B．blurred | C．natural | D．invisible |
| A．encountered | B．shadowed | C．declared | D．congratulated |
| A．sponsor | B．organizer | C．reporter | D．winner |
| A．clean | B．dark | C．soft | D．light |
| A．spirits | B．eyes | C．boundary | D．restriction |
| A．promote | B．decide | C．sustain | D．safeguard |
| A．lower | B．suspend | C．straighten | D．shake |
| A．never-ending | B．abstract | C．contradictory | D．discouraging |
I am not a gamer. I’ll be honest: video games and I don’t really see eye to eye, and I have no ambitions to become better. I never have the experience playing against my kids and winning. And that’s okay. Board games, on the other hand, are a different story. At least there, I stand a chance of victory.
One day, my 12-year-old son begged me to play a game with him. He held out a game controller and begged, “Just one game with me? You can use it to control the game through your movements.” His eyes were full of anticipation and I could see the excitement welling up within him. How could I possibly resist such a sincere and heartfelt request? “Just one game.” My son’s face lit up. In a matter of minutes, we were standing in our living room, virtually bowling away.
My son’s amusement at my lack of gaming skills was evident. I could see the struggle on his face as he fought to hold back his laughter. The game controller felt awkward and unfamiliar in my hand, but I did my best to copy my son’s movements and follow his lead. At one point, my son said, “No, Mom. You really have to put some force into it. Like this.” With that, he threw his arm back, stepped forward, and with plenty of force extended out his arm that was holding the controller. Instead of sending the virtual bowling ball flying, the controller went off his hand and broke the TV screen. The impact was immediate and destructive. The screen cracked, sending a crazy mosaic (马赛克) of colors dancing across its surface. It looked like something straight out of a dream.
The air stood still at that moment. The look on my son’s face was a funny mixture of horror, disbelief and guilt. He stayed absolutely frozen for a long moment. Then, slowly, he turned to me. “Mom...” with a weak smile, “Did I just... break the TV?”
注意：1. 续写的词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡上的相应位置作答。
Surprisingly, I wasn’t angry at all.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________But my son insisted on keeping the broken TV.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3 . Packaging can play a greater role in keeping produce and other foods fresh, therefore minimizing food waste — especially if consumers can better understand those packaging technologies. That’s among the takeaways of research led by Michigan State University (MSU)’s School of Packaging, detailed in a recently released white paper.
In the United States, food waste in landfills doubled from 1990 to 2020, according to data shared by the US Environmental Protection Agency this year. Researchers cited data showing 40% of the food supply is wasted each year, with 43% of that happening at the consumer or household level.
Ameripen, the only organization exclusively focused on US public policy for the entire packaging industry, and the Environmental Research & Education Foundation funded research that included a survey of more than 1,000 people in the United States. Ameripen said it wanted to know what role packaging could play in reducing household food waste as well as understand consumer awareness of food packaging’s value and functions.
The survey asked consumers about their understanding of packaging forms and willingness to pay more for packaging designed to reduce food waste, among other areas.
The study found that whole fruits and vegetables, particularly bananas and lettuce, are the foods most wasted by households, with dairy products, prepared packaged foods and leftovers also common culprits (罪魁祸首). “Half-eaten packaged food products and food without packaging that went bad before it was eaten are the two primary reasons for food waste in American households, indicating there is opportunity for improved packaging design to help consumers with extending shelf life, reuse and size,” the white paper states.
Researchers reported that while consumers’ current understanding of packaging technologies was “limited”, they indicated “they would pay more for food contained in packaging that extends freshness and shelf life.”
“There’s a need to design packaging for produce that is currently not packaged; that most of the produce in this study was wasted is because there is no packaging at all,” MSU’s Korey Fennel said during the webinar (网络研讨会), also noting the importance of “intelligent packaging” that could indicate the shelf life of food products.
1. What does the underlined word “minimizing” in the first paragraph mean?| A．Showing. | B．Continuing. | C．Recovering. | D．Reducing. |
| A．Summarize the previous paragraph. | B．Provide some advice for the readers. |
| C．Add some background information. | D．Introduce a new topic for discussion. |
| A．By making observations. | B．By asking questions. |
| C．By carrying out experiments. | D．By referring to former studies. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Unclear. | C．Critical. | D．Favorable. |
4 . Estefanía Rebellón was once a migrant (流动的) child. She was 10 when her family fled Cali, Colombia, because of death threats to her father, who had been forced into hiding. They settled in Miami. Despite the challenges she faced as a migrant child, she was lucky to have teachers who advocated for her and guided her along the way.
Rebellón moved from Miami to Los Angeles when she was 21 to pursue an acting career. In 2018, she was so moved after volunteering in migrant camps in Tijuana that she put her career on hold. “There were no schools set up to help these kids. They were walking around the camps barefoot,” she said.
Rebellón and her partner Kyle Schmidt used about $1,000 of their savings to buy tents and supplies and set up a makeshift (临时的) school at the border. They enlisted volunteer teachers to provide learning opportunities in the camps. In the months that followed, when those families living in the camps were moved to shelters, Rebellón and Schmidt wanted to continue offering educational services.
“I thought, ‘Why don’t we turn a bus into a mobile classroom, and we could take it to all the different shelters?’” Rebellón said. Over the next year, Rebellón and Schmidt bought and transformed a bus, partnered with shelters, and drove the bus over the border.
In 2019, she co-founded the Yes We Can World Foundation, a nonprofit organization that believes every child has the right to education and safe spaces regardless of their location, current legal status or economic background.
Rebellón’s organization hires professional teachers and tailors their curriculum (课程) to the specific needs of each student. “The program has been officially approved by the education secretary in Mexico and serves children aged 3 to 15 — a crucial period for education,” Rebellón said.
Today, the Yes We Can World Foundation educates 250 — 300 kids a day through its four school locations along the border and three mobile school buses. “Since 2019, the group has served more than 3,100 migrant children from 10 countries,” Rebellón said.
1. What can be learned about Rebellón from the first paragraph?| A．She received death threats. | B．Her teachers helped her a lot. |
| C．She was forced into hiding. | D．Her acting career began early. |
| A．She should value her hard-won life. |
| B．Children could be happy in any environment. |
| C．Migrant kids lacked opportunities for schooling. |
| D．She was lucky to have the ability to help others. |
| A．To set the scene for her show. |
| B．To realize her childhood dream. |
| C．To give full play to the value of a bus. |
| D．To offer children convenient access to education. |
| A．It’s far-reaching. | B．It’s predictable. |
| C．It’s short-lived. | D．It’s unidentifiable. |
5 . Is forgiveness against our human nature? To answer our question, we need to ask a further question: What is the essence of our humanity? For the sake of simplicity, people consider two distinctly different views of humanity.
The first view involves dominance and power. In an early paper on the psychology of forgiveness, Droll (1984) made the interesting claim that humans’ essential nature is more aggressive than forgiving allows. Those who forgive are against their basic nature, much to their harm. In his opinion, forgivers are compromising their well-being as they offer mercy to others, who might then take advantage of them.
The second view involves the theme of cooperation, mutual respect, and even love as the basis of who we are as humans. Researchers find that to fully grow as human beings, we need both to receive love from and offer love to others. Without love, our connections with a wide range of individuals in our lives can fall apart. Even common sense strongly suggests that the will to power over others does not make for harmonious interactions. For example, how well has slavery worked as a mode of social harmony?
From this second viewpoint of who we are as humans, forgiveness plays a key role in the biological and psychological integrity of both individuals and communities because one of the outcomes of forgiveness, shown through scientific studies, is the decreasing of hate and the restoration of harmony. Forgiveness can break the cycle of anger. At least to the extent the people from whom you are estranged (不和的) accept your love and forgiveness and are prepared to make the required adjustments. Forgiveness can heal relationships and reconnect people.
As an important note, when we take a classical philosophical perspective, we see the distinction between potentiality and actuality. We are not necessarily born with the capacity to forgive, but instead with the potential to learn about it and to grow in our ability to forgive. The actuality of forgiving, in real situations, develops with practice.
1. What is Droll’s idea about forgiveness?| A．People should offer mercy to others. |
| B．Aggressive people should learn to forgive. |
| C．Forgiveness depends on the nature of humanity. |
| D．People who forgive can have their own welfare affected. |
| A．To fight is to grow. | B．To give is to receive. |
| C．To forgive is to abuse. | D．To dominate is to harm. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Reserved. | C．Objective. | D．Skeptical. |
| A．Forgiveness is in our nature. | B．Forgiveness grows with time. |
| C．It takes practice to forgive. | D．Actuality is based on potentiality. |
1. Why does the woman say thanks to the man?
| A．He is driving her around. |
| B．He introduced a friend to her. |
| C．He recommended a job to her. |
| A．It is far from the supermarket. |
| B．It has an old-fashioned kitchen. |
| C．It is unaffordable for the woman. |
| A．Sell their apartment. | B．Look for a roommate. | C．Share a room with the woman. |
| A．She cooks them. | B．She eats them raw. | C．She makes juice out of them. |
1. What happened to the man?
| A．He missed all of his classes. |
| B．He didn’t eat his sandwich at noon. |
| C．He forgot to take his lunch to school. |
| A．A firefighter. | B．A cook. | C．A student. |
| A．At home. | B．In the hospital. | C．In the restaurant. |
| A．Coworkers. | B．Classmates. | C．Neighbors. |
| A．Exciting. | B．Relaxing. | C．Disappointing. |
