1 . Challenges are part of life and something we can all expect to encounter at one point or another during our lifetime. We handle challenges differently;some of us choose to face them head-on, while others flee in uncertainty.
Educate ourselves. The reason why some issues prove challenging for us is that we aren’t familiar with them.
Be persistent. This is what is required to accomplish anything, especially when it comes to overcoming challenges. No matter how difficult our challenges might be, we must be willing to push through and try again and again until we achieve victory over them.
Ask for help. There are times when we can’t go it alone and need others to help us conquer whatever challenges we face.
| A．Meet them head-on. |
| B．Adapt a different strategy. |
| C．It is said that two heads are better than one. |
| D．If we give up, we allow the challenges to conquer us instead. |
| E．Therefore, our knowledge and ability to conquer them is limited. |
| F．Whatever our positions, we all wish to conquer them and move on. |
| G．Some challenges can be overwhelming, making us question our ability to overcome them. |
2 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences — called light pollution — whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels — and light rhythms — to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night — dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth — is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage — the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way — the edge of our galaxy — arching overhead.
1. According to the passage, human beings .| A．prefer to live in the darkness |
| B．are used to living in the day light |
| C．were curious about the midnight world |
| D．had to stay at home with the light of the moon |
| A．The night. | B．The moon. | C．The sky. | D．The planet. |
| A．provide examples of animal protection. |
| B．show how light pollution affects animals. |
| C．compare the living habits of both species. |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined. |
| A．The Magic Light. | B．The Orange Haze. |
| C．The Disappearing Night. | D．The Rhythms of Nature. |
3 . Poetry has a place in the curriculum of primary schools. It can be taught as part of reading, writing, and language lessons, and it fits easily into classroom themes, projects, and celebrations.
Build Reading, Speaking & Listening Skills
The unique thing about poetry is that we often read aloud, repeat often, and share in groups. When children are listening to poems orally, they are building their listening skills
Explore Language & Vocabulary
Inspire Writing
Learn about how poems are created and the words they contain. It is the first step in writing.
Poetry is a form of expression. Writing it lets us get out our feelings and thoughts on a subject while reading it encourages us to connect and find meaning in our experiences. Poetry can have a positive impact on the social and emotional learning of children. It may offer them a new way of thinking about something. It can put things into words that children may not know how to express otherwise.
| A．Build a Love for Reading |
| B．Encourage Creative Thinking |
| C．It can add additional value to our studies |
| D．Poetry often contains words that rhyme for effect |
| E．Different types of poems have various components |
| F．Children have a natural curiosity to foster and encourage with poetry |
| G．They learn to attend to the words they hear and think about what those words mean |
1．活动的时间和地点；
2．活动的内容；
3．期待参与。
注意：
1．写作词数应为80左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Notice
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Student Union
5 . Sitting inside the Shenzhou XVI spacecraft, Gui Haichao, the first Chinese civilian on a spaceflight, together with the other two astronauts,
Born in 1986, Gui’s
Gui then pursued postdoctoral research overseas and published about 20 SCI academic papers in top international journals. After returning to China, he received Beihang’s invitation to teach
In the spring of 2018, Gui was told that China’s manned space authorities had made a decision
6 . Renewable energy sources can help combat climate change, but dietary choices also play a significant role. Opting for plant-based diets or lab-grown food can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system. We highlight the potential of dietary changes and the importance of providing choices instead of mandates （命令）.
Research shows that a global shift towards vegetarian（素食的） diets could cut emissions from food system by over half. Even small changes towards plant-based diets can have a meaningful impact. Substituting conventional food with lab-grown alternatives could prevent 1 degree of future warming. These findings demonstrate the power of dietary changes in addressing climate challenges.
Dietary choices are influenced by factors like culture, religion, and economics. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to become vegetarian immediately. Respecting individual choices is crucial in promoting sustainable diets. By offering information and raising awareness, individuals can make choices according to their needs and values while contributing to collective efforts.
Transforming industrial food production is necessary, but individual choices are still vital. Education and awareness campaigns can inform people about the environmental impact of different dietary choices and empower them to make informed decisions. Combining individual actions with systematic changes can create a powerful force for human health and the planet. Rather than expecting immediate vegetarianism, acknowledging the impact of small changes is important. Gradual shifts towards more sustainable dietary choices, like reducing animal product consumption and increasing vegetable intake, can result in significant environmental benefits when multiplied across populations.
In conclusion, addressing climate change requires multiple approaches, with dietary choices playing a crucial role. Offering choices while recognizing the challenges associated with dietary shifts is essential. By combining personal dietary changes with broader efforts to reshape the food system, we can make substantial progress towards a healthier planet while respecting individual preferences.
1. Which is a dietary choice to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?| A．Choosing plant-based diets. |
| B．Choosing renewable energy sources. |
| C．Giving the command for dietary changes. |
| D．Increasing consumption of processed food. |
| A．By answering questions. | B．By listing a figure. |
| C．By analyzing the reasons. | D．By using a quotation, |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Skeptical. | C．Favorable. | D．Objective. |
| A．Small changes in life choices can make big impacts |
| B．Renewable energy sources can reduce gas emissions |
| C．Lab-grown nutritional food could prevent future warming |
| D．The power of dietary choices in fighting climate change |
7 . Shortly before he turned 60, Mark Fuhrmann realized what he wanted. He, now, at 65, has just returned from a second voyage. His 6,835 mile-round trip from Nova Scotia took in the great lakes of the US, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.
Fuhrmann started these journeys “to kickstart retirement” from the maritime PR business he ran in Oslo for the past 30 years. Before he set off, in June last year, he swapped (交换) his house for a flat, and greatly reduced his possessions. “It was good to get rid of all of those things and say: ‘This isn’t a phase; this is a new season,’” he says.
Amazingly, he didn’t plan his trip, beyond committing to fundraise for Medecins Sans Frontières. “I thought: ‘I’ll try to do 40km each day.’ But I never knew where I was going to lay down my head.”
The challenges were psychological, physical, and sometimes life-threatening. In Florida, he was chased by an alligator (短吻鳄), but narrowly escaped from it. In the Boston area, he saw “a black fin moving towards me like a snake”. He lay his oar (划桨) across his lap and waited. “If a great white shark can swim leisurely, that’s exactly what it did. It just passed me,” he says. Ten minutes later, Fuhrmann pulled his kayak (小艇) into a cove, where he ran into a man who invited him into his home for coffee and apple pie. His whole trip was filled with these switchbacks and moments of connection with strangers, which Fuhrmann experienced as “a call to authenticity”.
What does he mean? “Nature is born within us. If you avoid that, you avoid experiencing something that is vital to who you are as a person. I want real things — life isn’t about having more. I think we need to accept where we are at this stage of life, at 60 or 65.”
“I look at retirement as a season,” he says. He started his latest voyage because “I wanted to have a better understanding of who I was. I wanted to have time for my thoughts to wander, to restart, to discover the value and power within myself.”
1. Why did Fuhrmann get rid of most of his possessions?| A．To make donations to charity. | B．To start a new life in retirement. |
| C．To make up for his business loss. | D．To collect money for the journey. |
| A．Blessings. | B．Ambitions. | C．Defeats. | D．Challenges. |
| A．The meaning of life is achieving more. |
| B．Old people should take things as they are. |
| C．It is good to have nature-based experience. |
| D．It is advisable for aging people to play safe. |
| A．To reflect on his past. | B．To discover his true self. |
| C．To relax his mind and body. | D．To be free from the noisy world. |
8 . In 1990, Hal Donaldson was 23 years old, fresh out of college and found himself in Calcutta, India, where he was asked to interview Mother Teresa.
Donaldson says about the great woman famed for feeding the hungry, “She wasn’t wearing shoes and her ankles were swollen. She sat down with me and was very polite.” After the interview, Mother Teresa asked him, “What are you doing to help the poor?” Donaldson admitted that he was young and wasn’t focused on helping others. With a smile on her face, Mother Teresa said, “Everyone can do something.”
Those words deeply struck Donaldson and forced him to face hard truths about himself.
Hal Donaldson grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. When he was 12 years old, his parents were hit by a drunk driver; his father died, and his mother was seriously injured. To make ends meet, they went on welfare. Donaldson says, “I had holes in my shoes and clothes. When you’re teased at school for that, you just want to escape.”
He managed to do just that. Donaldson got into college and turned his focus to making money for himself. He says, “I was just trying to find my way out of insignificance.” However, it’s easy to overlook others along the way. I was the guy that would see a homeless person and cross the street, so I didn’t have to confront (面对) him. My focus was on climbing to the top instead of helping those trying to climb with me.
Donaldson returned home from India with a different thought. He traveled to eight cities in America and stayed on the streets and listened to stories of the homeless. “My heart broke,” he says. “I knew I could no longer just live for myself.”
Inspired by Mother Teresa’s words and the stories he’d heard across America, Donaldson loaded a pick up truck with $300 worth of groceries and handed them out to anyone who needed help. In 1994, Donaldson created the nonprofit organization, Convoy for Hope, which works with communities across America and around the world. Their work focuses on feeding children, women’s empowerment, helping farmers and disaster services.
1. What did 23-year-old Hal Donaldson do in India?| A．He interviewed Mother Teresa. |
| B．He fed the hungry with Mother Teresa. |
| C．He attended an job-interview for a college. |
| D．He did something to help the poor. |
| A．He was born with disability. | B．He led a hard life as a child. |
| C．He was well treated at school. | D．He survived as an orphan. |
| A．Self-centered | B．Sympathetic | C．Popular | D．Generous |
| A．He preferred traveling to volunteering. |
| B．He suddenly fell in love with journalism. |
| C．He turned his focus to living for himself. |
| D．He gradually devoted himself to helping others. |
9 . When I was 12 years old, I already knew that my teen years were going to be the worst years of my life. I was a total outsider, bullied (欺凌) at school. I felt completely alone in my small town.
But by starting to do volunteer work when I was 14, I turned my problem into a passion for helping others. The opportunity to practice kindness made me feel like my life had a greater purpose. The more positive energy I shared, the more kindness and appreciation I received. I realized that my purpose in life would be to reach out to people, specifically teenagers, and help them feel less alone.
Books were my true friends back then. I was so thankful that the authors wrote those books. The kindness they offered me with their books saved my life. One of my biggest dreams was to become an author so I could write books that would help other teenagers the way those books helped me.
After surviving terrible experiences at school and at home, I made a choice to take the optimistic, positive road in the next steps of my journey. My dream career, one I thought was only possible for the authors I loved, is what I am doing now. I have been a full-time author of teen novels since 2007 and am grateful for this amazing opportunity to reach out to readers every single day.
Kindness saved me when I needed help the most. Even small acts of kindness can change someone’s life. You never know what someone else is going through. But by practicing daily kindness, you become an architect of positive change.
1. What was the author’s life like when he was 12?| A．Boring. | B．Peaceful. | C．Painful. | D．Meaningful. |
| A．It made him popular in his town. | B．It helped him find the meaning of life. |
| C．It helped him understand others’ lives better. | D．It helped to shape his dream career. |
| A．He was inspired by his teacher. | B．He could pass positive energy to readers. |
| C．He wanted to share his school experiences. | D．He found he had a talent for writing. |
| A．Say “no” to bullies bravely. | B．Make positive changes in their lives. |
| C．Treat others with kindness in daily life. | D．Learn to care more about others’ feelings. |
