| A．In 1973. | B．In 1975. | C．In 1977. |
2 . Bred to be more sweeter, today’s cherries, bananas and apples taste different than they used — to but not necessarily better. Among fruit farmers, the word “quality” is now routinely used as a standard for “high in sugar”, though firmness, color and size are also considerations. In a recent study about ways to enhance the sweetness of fruit using “molecular (分子的) approaches”, a group of plant scientists wrote that, in general, the sugar content of many fruits are now higher than before owing to continuous selection and breeding. Modern apple varieties, the scientists stressed, were on average sweeter than older ones.
The sweetness of fruit depends not just on how it is bred but also on growing conditions, yield and harvest. The lead researcher, Sugiura, said, “If you could taste an apple harvested 30 years ago, you would feel the difference.” He believed that modern apples are picked so early that even if they are bred for sweetness, they often don’t develop their full character. The fragrance (香味) never develops in fruit that is harvested too early.
Jim Cooper, an apple farmer in England, is regretful to admit the fact that many people will never taste the “strawberry hint” in a really ripe Pearmain, a type of heritage apple. In a way, the rise of consistently sweeter fruit in our lifetimes has been a victory of plant breeding. After all, it’s a rare person who would seek out bitter grapes if they could have sweet ones instead.
But the sweetness of modern fruit is not without its problems, especially for people with diabetes (糖尿病), who have to reduce their intake of higher-sugar fruits. Fruit that is bred sweeter also tends to be lower in the chemicals that make it healthy. Considering health, maybe the real problem with modern fruit is that it has become yet another sweet thing in a world with sugar. Even grapefruits, which used to be quite bitter, are sometimes now as sweet as oranges. If you’ve never tasted a sour cherry, how can you fully appreciate a sweet one?
1. In what aspect is many fruits different from before?| A．Sugar content. | B．Soft skin. | C．Bright color. | D．High yield. |
| A．They are bred too early. | B．They taste so sweet. |
| C．They are losing a good flavor. | D．They need a higher yield. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Critical. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．It’s a wise choice to breed fruits for sweetness. |
| B．Breeding sweet fruits improves the quality of fruits. |
| C．Some fruits like grapes and cherries taste the same. |
| D．The sweetness of fruits will cause health issues. |
3 . In the time before air-conditioning, southern China’s sky wells played a key role in keeping people’s homes cool. Could they do it again today?
A skywell, or “tian jing”, is atypical characteristic of traditional homes in southern and eastern China. Different from a northern Chinese courtyard, or “yuan zi”, a skywell is smaller and less open to the outdoor environment. Its size and design differ from place to place.
Skywells were designed to cool buildings at a time well before air-conditioning existed. When wind blows above a skywell house, it can enter the indoor space through the opening. Because outdoor air is often cooler than indoor air, the incoming wind travels down the walls to the lower stories and create airflows by replacing warmer indoor air, which rises and leaves through the opening.
Although skywell buildings have existed in China for hundreds of years, in recent times they have often been forgotten by people who prefer modern buildings. Over the past two decades, however, skywell buildings have been making a comeback.
Yu Youhong, 55, has spent more than 30 years restoring (修复) skywell homes in Wuyuan county of Jiangxi province, apart of the old Huizhou. One of the skywell homes restored by Yu is in the village of Yan, in Wuyuan county. The deserted 300-year-old house was bought by Edward Gawne, a former marketing director from the UK, and his Chinese wife, Liao Minx in, in 2015. The couple turned the three-storey house into a 14-room hotel with the help of Yu. They kept the spaces surrounding the sky wells in their original state: open and with natural airflow. Gawne says that even without air conditioning the skywell areas are very comfortable in summer.
Yu says he expects sky wells to be more and more popular among younger generations especially as sustainability (可持续性) becomes an important element for new buildings.
1. What do we know about the sky wells?| A．They had the same size and design. |
| B．They were commonly seen throughout China. |
| C．They acted as air-conditioners in the summer. |
| D．They were fully open to the outdoors like courtyard. |
| A．When sky wells appeared. |
| B．What sky wells look like. |
| C．Why sky wells are no longer popular. |
| D．How sky wells cool buildings. |
| A．They enlarged its rooms. |
| B．They moved the skywell. |
| C．They pulled it down and rebuilt it. |
| D．They kept part of its architectural characteristic. |
| A．The comeback of sky wells. |
| B．An introduction to an expert in sky wells. |
| C．The preservation of traditional Chinese architecture. |
| D．The influence of modernization on ancient buildings. |
4 . I finally climbed into bed at 1: 20 in the morning. My friends had helped me celebrate my 31st birthday in the basement apartment, where I lived.
Earlier in the day I had prepared for the unlikely event of a flood. We are about a third of a mile from the banks of the Ahr River. It had been raining buckets that week and the government had sent out a flood warning, though not for where I was. Still, I’d placed sandbags on the floor outside my garden door and put electronics on tables. “Silly bro!” My friends laughed at me for doing that, but I thought, why take a chance?
As I drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by the sound of rushing water, as if I were lying beside a waterfall. When I got off the bed, I was shocked that cold water was rising fast. In darkness, I grabbed my cellphone and turned on the flashlight. When I stepped out of the bedroom, I saw water shooting through the gaps of the door.
I began to panic. I knew I had to get out—fast! In bare feet, I started to make my way to the only escape: the door that led upstairs to the main floor. Finally I made it to the door and tried several times to-pull it open even just a little bit, but the rushing water shut it again. I looked around for anything I could use to keep it open. There in the corner was a coat rack (架子). I took it and, once again, opened the door, throwing the coat rack between the door and the frame (门框) to keep the door from shutting. Finally, I managed to make a gap just wide enough to squeeze (挤) through and make it into the hallway.
I leaped on to the stairs and ran outside. I stood there in the darkness, wet through. What was once a lovely street was now a waterscape, with floating ruins instead of people and cars. The river had drowned (淹没) the neighborhood!
1. What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 2imply?| A．Better safe than sorry. |
| B．It never rains but it pours. |
| C．A lost chance never returns. |
| D．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
| A．Celebrating his birthday. |
| B．Sleeping in the basement. |
| C．Placing sandbags by the door. |
| D．Playing with electronic devices. |
| A．Making his way to the door. |
| B．Finding a coat rack. |
| C．Keeping the door from shutting. |
| D．Squeezing through the gap. |
| A．Sad and shocked. |
| B．Annoyed and anxious. |
| C．Surprised and disappointed. |
| D．Puzzled and awkward. |
1. How old is the speaker’s brother?
| A．15. | B．19. | C．20. |
| A．A police officer. | B．A nurse. | C．A firefighter. |
| A．Her brother has been infected with COVID-19. |
| B．Her brother is in isolation because of COVID-19. |
| C．Her brother is busy helping fight against COVID-19. |
| A．Help more people like her brother. |
| B．Spend more time with family. |
| C．Study in a police training school. |
My first year of senior high school felt awkward. The school was twice as big as my old school, and to make matters worse, my closest friends went to a different high school. I felt very lonely.
One cold and windy Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at home at our dining room table doing homework, with a fire going in our fireplace. As usual, my cat was lying on top of my papers, purring(发出呼噜声)loudly. She was never far from me. I had rescued her when she was a kitten and put my name on her collar in case she got lost again.
Suddenly, I smelled something strange, and then I noticed that smoke was pouring in. It filled the room so quickly that we all ran out into the front yard. By the time we made our way outside, the whole roof was in flames and the fire was spreading quickly.
When the fire was finally out, our house was almost completely burned down. I was in a bad mood and then it struck me...I hadn’t seen my cat. Where was my cat? Much to my horror, I realized that my cat was gone and my heart ached for her. Then all at once it hit me-the new school, the fire, my cat—I broke down in tears and cried and cried.
The next day, I went to school. But I was totally embarrassed by everything. My clothes and shoes were borrowed from my aunt. I had no books or homework, and my backpack was gone. I had my life in that backpack! I didn’t want to grow up if it was going to be this way. I just wanted to curl up and quit school.
It always seems that bad news spreads quickly. Everyone in high school, including the teachers, was aware of my sad situation. What a way to start off at a new school! This was not the kind of attention I was looking for.
The next day at school, people were acting even stranger than usual. They kept asking me to hurry up to the gym. I thought it was strange, but when I went into the gym, I knew why.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
There was a big table with all kinds of stuff on it.
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A week later, I was planning my new bedroom when the doorbell rang.
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7 . Some ants have figured out how to avoid getting lost: build taller anthills, according to a recent study.
Desert ants living in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food and reach as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. To find their way home, desert ants use a navigation system, relying on the sun’s position and counting their steps to track their location relative to their nest.
But this system becomes increasingly unreliable as the distance from the nest increases. “We realized that, whenever the ants in salt pans came closer to their nest, they suddenly pinpointed the nest hill from several meters distance,” says Markus Knaden, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “This made us think that the hill serves as a nest-defining landmark.”
So Knaden and colleagues captured ants from nests in the middle of salt pans and from along their shorelines. Only salt-pan nests had distinct hills, up to 40 centimeters tall, whereas the hills on shoreline nests were lower or barely noticeable. Next, the team removed any hills and placed the captured insects some distance away from their nests. Salt-pan ants struggled more than shore ants to find homes. Shore ants relied on the shoreline for guidance and weren’t affected by the hill removal, the researchers concluded.
The team further conducted another study to see if desert ants were deliberately building a taller hill when their surroundings lacked any visible landmarks. So, the researchers removed the hills of 16 salt-pan nests and installed (安装) two 50-centimeter-tall blocks near eight of them. The other eight nests were left without any artificial visual aid. After three days, the researchers found that seven ants from the unaided nests had rebuilt their hills. But only two ants from the nests with man-made blocks nearby had bothered to rebuild.
“It implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their environment and change their decisions based on their conclusion,” says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona.
1. What aspect of ants is the recent study mainly about?| A．Challenges of survival. | B．Landmarks of habitats. |
| C．Intelligence of navigation. | D．Comparison of varieties. |
| A．Explored. | B．Recognized. | C．Climbed. | D．Crossed. |
| A．To observe different ants’ reactions. | B．To prove impacts of various habitats. |
| C．To disturb desert ants’ navigation system. | D．To test anthills’ functions and significance. |
| A．Evaluate and make changes. | B．Visual aid is a must. |
| C．Cooperation brings victory. | D．No man-made blocks are used. |
注意：
1.词数 110 词左右；
2.可适当增加细节，使行文连贯。
Dear Sylvia,
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Yours,
Zhang Hua
In early June of 2023, Wang Pushi, a young man with a background in Kunqu Opera and also the lead singer of a rock band,
Wang expressed his hope
10 . When was the last time you made space in your life to play? When I was a kid, I knew exactly what play
This is a problem. Play is an
To bring more play into your life, you don’t necessarily need to make any significant
| A．needed | B．stressed | C．showed | D．meant |
| A．selling | B．making | C．finding | D．saving |
| A．proud | B．tolerant | C．approving | D．deserving |
| A．forced | B．enabled | C．reminded | D．inspired |
| A．work | B．fight | C．play | D．share |
| A．find fault with | B．lose track of | C．take delight in | D．make peace with |
| A．humbly | B．naturally | C．quickly | D．seriously |
| A．essential | B．urgent | C．individual | D．immediate |
| A．secretly | B．previously | C．personally | D．sufficiently |
| A．expect | B．assess | C．practice | D．accept |
| A．sense | B．changes | C．progress | D．contributions |
| A．sweet | B．relaxing | C．simple | D．interesting |
| A．win | B．pity | C．dream | D．surprise |
| A．firm | B．playful | C．friendly | D．positive |
| A．value | B．luck | C．help | D．joy |
