1. Who is the speaker aimed at?
| A．Those who feel depressed. |
| B．Those who need some rest. |
| C．Those who are music lovers. |
| A．Talk to Tessa. | B．Play some music. | C．Hang out with friends. |
| A．She's a hostess. | B．She's a musician. | C．She's a psychology teacher. |
1. What does Stephen have a problem with?
| A．Developing a habit. | B．Managing the time. | C．Focusing on tasks. |
| A．To plan the week ahead. |
| B．To remember key dates. |
| C．To write down feelings. |
| A．Share the list with friends. |
| B．Write important things on the list first. |
| C．Make the list for the next day the night before. |
| A．Take a class. | B．See a friend. | C．Do some shopping. |
1. When did Amber begin attending college?
| A．At age 18. | B．At age 19. | C．At age 20. |
| A．It was boring. | B．It was demanding. | C．It was interesting. |
| A．From the TV. | B．From a poster. | C．From her boss. |
| A．She put it in the bank. |
| B．She spent it on a vehicle. |
| C．She donated it to a school. |
1. Why does Phyllis call Evan Peters?
| A．To send an invitation. |
| B．To offer some information. |
| C．To confirm a booking. |
| A．Buy the ticket another day. |
| B．Plan the trip in advance. |
| C．Contact the airline immediately. |
5 . Reading is often seen as an individual activity, but it definitely doesn’t have to be. If you join a book club, reading with others can be a positive social interaction.
In such a fast-paced world, sometimes it’s challenging to find the time and motivation to read. By joining a book club, you make a commitment to read the book of the month or the week and discuss your insights with others.
Reading is one of the most important things you can do for your brain, but reading with other people can make it even better.
Another plus is that at a book club you get together with your club members regularly, with whom you can share not only your thoughts about books but also other aspects of life.
| A．This can help you meet your reading goals. |
| B．Joining a book club can offer you many benefits. |
| C．Book clubs can boost your happiness and well-being. |
| D．Do you often have difficulty finishing reading a book? |
| E．This brings a sense of community, belonging, and friendship. |
| F．Have you found yourself always reading similar types of books? |
| G．Meeting with others and exchanging ideas about things is the key. |
6 . Top Theme Parks and Amusement Parks in Australia
Magic Mountain Merimbula
Located in the town of Merimbula, this small theme park is situated on the Sapphire Coast. There are multiple attractions in this place including Kiddie Splash Pool, Magic Carpet Slide and the Diamond Pyth on Roller Coaster. You can buy souvenirs from the gift shops for friends and family back home.
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 10 am to 4 pm
Price: $90 per person
The Big Banana Fun Park
The Big Banana Fun Park is located in the city of Coffs Harbour and it boasts a large walk-through banana. Guests can go roller skating at the ice-skating rink, enjoy water slides and play golf.
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 9 am to 5 pm
Price: $25 per adult (age 13-99); $15 per child (age 1-12)
Wet Wild Gold Coast
Owned and operated by the Village Roadshow Theme Parks, this park features 17 water slides, 4 pools, and 2 children’s areas. If you are traveling during the winter season, there is nothing to worry as the pools and slides are heated according to your convenience.
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 10 am to 5 pm
Price: $24 per person
Big Splash Waterpark
Featuring nine slides, a 50-meter (164 feet) pool, and kiddie pools, this park is a perfect spot to chill when the sun is out. Being one of the oldest theme parks in Australia, it boasts the famous Jammo Pool.
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 10 am to 6 pm
Price: $150 per adult (age 13-99); 40% discount per child (age 1-12)
Enjoy with your kids at one of the theme parks in Australia.
1. What can visitors do in The Big Banana Fun Park?| A．Ride on a roller coaster. | B．Play golf. |
| C．Buy gifts. | D．Taste big bananas. |
| A．$60. | B．$90. | C．$120. | D．$180. |
| A．Parents. | B．Children. | C．Guides. | D．Swimmers. |
7 . Four Inventions That Changed the World
The course of human evolution has been filled with inventions. The following inventions changed the world in one way or another.
Match
Many of us wonder what life was like before matches. We can thank a British pharmacist and his dirty mixing stick. In 1820s, John Walker noticed a dried lump on the end of a stick while he was stirring a mix of chemicals. When he tried to scrape (刮掉) it off, flames appeared. The initial matches were made of cardboard but soon the matches came in a box equipped with a piece of sandpaper for striking.
Penicillin
Penicillin was discovered in 1928 when a young bacteriologist, Alexander Fleming, was tidying up his lab. After having been on vacation, he returned to work to find that a dish of Staphylococcus bacteria had been left uncovered, and he noticed that mould (霉菌) on the culture had killed many of the bacteria. His further research found that it could kill other bacteria.
Microwave Oven
Of all the sci-fi kitchen appliances, the microwave oven really relieves the load on housewives. It was discovered in the 1940s. When Percy Spencer, an engineer, was working on a magnetron (磁控管), he noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had started to melt due to the microwaves. Spencer found that indeed, when food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, it cooked quickly.
Plastic
The first plastic was invented in 1907 by Leo Hendrik Baekeland. His initial quest was to invent a ready replacement for shellac (虫胶), an expensive product got from lac beetles. Baekeland combined formaldehyde (甲醛) with a waste product of coal, and heated the mixture. Rather than a shellac-like material, he created a substance that didn’t melt under heat and stress.
1. Who invented matches?| A．John Walker. | B．Alexander Fleming. |
| C．Percy Spencer. | D．Leo Hendrik Baekeland. |
| A．A shellac-like material. | B．A product from lac beetles. |
| C．A replacement for shellac. | D．A waste product of coal. |
| A．They were the results of joint efforts. | B．They were the accidental discoveries. |
| C．They were the fruits of years of research. | D．They were unaccepted when coming out. |
(1)“How to Improve Yourself”活动的目的；
(2)你的建议和措施，至少三条。（如戒掉网瘾，理智消费等）；
(3)你的感受。
How to Improve Yourself
At present, our school is launching How to Improve Yourself campaign. ...
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9 . The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their work on mRNA vaccines (疫苗), a crucial tool in holding back the spread of COVID-19.
Karikó,68, is from Hungary. In the 1970s, she began studying a new area of research: messenger RNA (mRNA). mRNA is a special molecule (分子) which carries instructions that tell cells what proteins to make. Proteins are one of the building blocks of life. They’re involved in almost every process in living things, from fighting diseases to building muscles to helping our bodies work. Karikó was excited about the idea that mRNA could be used to help the body fight many different diseases.
In 1985, Karikó moved to America to continue her research. In 1989, she joined the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in Philadelphia as a scientist. But as time went on, the initial excitement surrounding mRNA research started to disappear, and other scientists thought it was too financially risky to fund. Karikó had trouble getting money for her research. She even got a pay cut from the school. What’s worse, at this time, she suffered from cancer. But she stuck at it.
Karikó got to know another UPenn scientist, Drew Weissman in the late 1990s while photocopying research papers. He was hoping to find a way to create a vaccine for a disease known as HIV. The two began talking and soon decided to work together.
One of the biggest problems in using mRNA as a medicine was that the human body saw mRNA as an enemy and fought it off. Together, they came up with an approach to treating mRNA．In 2005, they published their key discovery: mRNA could be changed and delivered effectively into the body to activate (激活) the body’s protective immune system. Thanks to their work, companies were able to develop mRNA vaccines far more quickly than ever before, which have saved millions of lives around the world.
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly talk about regarding mRNA?| A．Its reflections on health. | B．Its main components. |
| C．Its threats to proteins. | D．Its research values. |
| A．He met Karikó by accident. | B．He applied mRNA to HIV. |
| C．He invited Karikó to UPenn. | D．He helped discover mRNA. |
| A．Their idea on how to recognize COVID-19 fast. |
| B．Their method of testing the mRNA vaccines’ effect. |
| C．Their way to make the human body accept mRNA. |
| D．Their experiment of activating the immune system. |
| A．We should pursue excellence in our careers. |
| B．Creativity results from challenging authority. |
| C．Scientists’ work follows technological trends. |
| D．Success comes from a lasting desire to explore. |
10 . A new study shows homing pigeons (鸽子) combine precise internal compasses and memorized landmarks to retrace a path back to their home—even four years after the previous time when they made the trip.
Testing nonhuman memory keeping is challenging in research studies. “It’s rare that there is a gap of several years between when an animal stores the information and when it is next required to get it back,” says Dora Biro, a zoologist at the University of Oxford. In a recent study, Biro and her colleagues compared domestic homing pigeons’ paths three or four years after the birds established routes back to their home from a farm 8.6 kilometers away. The study built on data from a 2016 experiment in which pigeons learned routes in different social contexts during several flights-on their own or with peers that did or did not know the way.
Using data from GPS devices temporarily attached to the birds’ backs, the researchers compared the flight paths a group of pigeons took in 2016 with many of the same birds’ routes in 2019 or 2020, without the birds visiting the release site in between. Some birds missed a handful of landmarks along the way, but many others took “strikingly similar” routes to those they used in 2016, “It was as if the last time they flew there was just the day before, not four years ago,” says Oxford zoologist and study co-author Julien Collet.
The team found that the pigeons remembered a route just as well if they first flew it alone or with others and performed much better than those that had not made the journey in 2016. “The result is not surprising, but it provides new confirmation of homing pigeons’ remarkable memory. It closes the distance a little bit between our overconfident human cognitive (认知的) abilities and what animals can do,” says Verner Bingman, who studies animal navigation at Bowling Green State University and was not involved in the study.
1. What does paragraph 1 mention about homing pigeons?| A．The time of leaving home. | B．The location of their birth. |
| C．The ways they navigate home. | D．The reasons for their taking trips. |
| A．Through questionnaires. | B．Through information assumptions. |
| C．Through lab experiments on animals. | D．Through comparative analysis of data. |
| A．Prediction method. | B．Tracking method. |
| C．Expert consultation. | D．Literature consultation. |
| A．They are underestimated. | B．They have been declining. |
| C．They are much lower than humans’. | D．They have never been confirmed. |
