1 . Like many young people, Jessica wants to travel the globe. Unlike most of them, this 25-year-old is doing it
They’re part of a new form of the
It’s not all sightseeing. The two travelers carefully
The couple has a high
| A．indoors | B．online | C．single-handed | D．full-time |
| A．game | B．service | C．vacation | D．procedure |
| A．safe | B．busy | C．helpful | D．affordable |
| A．local | B．private | C．sharing | D．agricultural |
| A．strangers’ | B．parents’ | C．co-workers’ | D．neighbors’ |
| A．favor | B．defense | C．honor | D．absence |
| A．plan | B．explain | C．compare | D．complete |
| A．buy | B．transport | C．choose | D．please |
| A．support | B．comfort | C．control | D．attention |
| A．cooking | B．staying | C．waiting | D．studying |
| A．success | B．survival | C．growth | D．unemployment |
| A．budget | B．abilities | C．expectations | D．understanding |
| A．admiring | B．donating | C．sending | D．borrowing |
| A．clean | B．open | C．simple | D．empty |
| A．guess | B．decision | C．response | D．impression |
2 . Over the last seven years, most states have banned texting by drivers, and public service campaigns have tried a wide range of methods to persuade people to put down their phones when they are behind the wheel.
Yet the problem, by just about any measure, appears to be getting worse. Americans are still texting while driving, as well as using social networks and taking photos. Road accidents, which had fallen for years, are now rising sharply.
That is partly because people are driving more, but Mark Rosekind, the chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said distracted（分心）driving was "only increasing, unfortunately."
"Big change requires big ideas." he said in a speech last month, referring broadly to the need to improve road safety. So to try to change a distinctly modern behavior, lawmakers and public health experts are reaching back to an old approach: They want to treat distracted driving like drunk driving.
An idea from lawmakers in New York is to give police officers a new device called the Textalyzer. It would work like this: An officer arriving at the scene of a crash could ask for the phones of the drivers and use the Textalyzer to check in the operating system for recent activity. The technology could determine whether a driver had just texted, emailed or done anything else that is not allowed under New York's hands-free driving laws.
"We need something on the books that can change people's behavior,” said Félix W. Ortiz, who pushed for the state's 2001 ban on hand-held devices by drivers. If the Textalyzer bill becomes law, he said, "people are going to be more afraid to put their hands on the cell phone."
1. Which of the following best describes the ban on drivers' texting in the US?| A．Ineffective. | B．Unnecessary. |
| C．Inconsistent. | D．Unfair. |
| A．Where a driver came from. | B．Whether a driver used their phone. |
| C．How fast a driver was going. | D．When a driver arrived at the scene. |
| A．Advice. | B．Data. | C．Tests. | D．Laws. |
| A．To Drive or Not to Drive? Think Before You Start |
| B．Texting and Driving? Watch Out for the Textalyzer |
| C．New York Banning Hand-Held Devices by Drivers. |
| D．The Next Generation Cell Phone: The Textalyzer- |
3 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?
These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.
Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.
More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.
Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).
How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about mobile phones?| A．Their target users. | B．Their wide popularity. |
| C．Their major functions. | D．Their complex design. |
| A．Admit. | B．Argue. |
| C．Remember. | D．Remark. |
| A．They like smartphone games. | B．They enjoy guessing callers’ identity. |
| C．They keep using landline phones. | D．They are attached to their family. |
| A．It remains a family necessity. |
| B．It will fall out of use some day. |
| C．It may increase daily expenses. |
| D．It is as important as the gas light. |
4 . Over the past 38 years, Mr. Wang has pretended to be someone else many times,and has even learned to
The 60-year-old is not an actor, but a
In the 1990s, a group of thieves often sold stolen goods with the help of some beggars. To look into the
“I often
Wang, who is often in
Wang's
| A．teach | B．compare | C．assess | D．speak |
| A．lawyer | B．doctor | C．policeman | D．businessman |
| A．role | B．study | C．family | D．audience |
| A．minor | B．case | C．future | D．question |
| A．interviewed | B．joined | C．arrested | D．assisted |
| A．challenge | B．experience | C．appearance | D．freedom |
| A．vote | B．sympathy | C．permission | D．trust |
| A．invited | B．forced | C．helped | D．expected |
| A．drunk | B．deserted | C．bored | D．lost |
| A．guide | B．persuade | C．excuse | D．allow |
| A．refer to | B．note down | C．ask about | D．miss out |
| A．plan | B．agreement | C．direction | D．information |
| A．awkward | B．dangerous | C．unfortunate | D．strange |
| A．separate | B．recover | C．escape | D．hear |
| A．courage | B．honesty | C．kindness | D．optimism |
The shelves in most supermarkets are full of family-size this and multi-buy that. However, if you’re shopping for one, buying extra
Of course, shops are not charities — they price goods in the way
Many supermarkets are no longer doing “buy one get one free” promotions because of the
If your supermarket sells loose produce, then buying smaller quantities is easier. Over the last two years, some supermarkets
Who knows, perhaps some of the more forward-looking
6 . I have worked as a keeper at the National Zoo, Paris for 11 years. Spot and Stripe are the first tiger cubs that have ever been born here. Globally, a third of Sumatran cubs in zoos don't make it to adulthood, so I decided to give them round-the-clock care at home.
I've got two children—the younger one, Kynan, was extremely happy about the tigers arriving - but all of us really looked forward to being part of their lives and watching them grow. I wasn't worried about bringing them into my home with my wife and kids. These were cubs. They weighed about 2.5 kg and were so small that there was absolutely no risk.
As they grew more mobile, we let them move freely around the house during the day, but when we were asleep we had to contain them in a large room, otherwise they'd get up to mischief. We'd come down in the morning to find they'd turned the room upside down, and left it looking like a zoo.
Things quickly got very intense due to the huge amount of energy required to look after them. There were some tough times and I just felt extremely tired. I was grateful that my family was there to help. We had to have a bit of a production line going, making up “tiger milk”, washing baby bottles, and cleaning the floors.
When Spot and Stripe were four months old, they were learning how to open doors and jump fences, and we knew it really was time for them to go. It was hard for us to finally part with them. For the first few days, Kynan was always a bit disappointed that the cubs weren't there.
I'm not sad about it. I'm hands-on with them every day at the zoo, and I do look back very fondly on the time that we had them.
1. Why did the author bring the tiger cubs home?| A．To ensure their survival. | B．To observe their differences. |
| C．To teach them life skills. | D．To let them play with his kids. |
| A．Behave badly. | B．Lose their way. | C．Sleep soundly. | D．Miss their mom. |
| A．Boring. | B．Tiring. | C．Costly. | D．Risky. |
| A．They frightened the children. | B．They became difficult to contain. |
| C．They annoyed the neighbours. | D．They started fighting each other. |
Last summer, Hilda worked as a volunteer with dolphin trainers at a sea life park. Her job was to make sure the tanks were free of any items so that the trainers could train the dolphins to fetch specific items. However, one day after cleaning, one of the dolphins, Maya, presented Hilda with a candy wrapper from the tank. When Katherine, the trainer, saw this, she blamed Hilda for her carelessness. Upset but not discouraged by this event, Hilda decided to do some spying on Maya.
The next morning, Hilda arrived at the park early. She put on her scuba gear (水下呼吸器) and jumped into the tank for her usual, underwater sweep. Finding nothing in the tank, she climbed out of the water just in time to see Katherine jumping in on the other side. After what happened yesterday, Hilda knew what she was doing. She watched as Katherine performed her underwater search, but Hilda wasn’t surprised when she surfaced empty-handed.
During the tank sweeps, Maya had been swimming playfully, but now the dolphin stopped suddenly and swam to the back part of the tank where the filter (过滤) box was located. She stuck her nose down behind the box and then swam away. What was Maya doing back there? Hilda wondered. She jumped back into the water and swam over to take a look behind the box, and her question was answered. Hilda then swam across the tank following Maya’s path and emerged from the water to find Katherine removing her scuba gear. As Katherine turned around, her mouth dropped open. There was Maya at the edge of the tank with a comb (梳子) in her mouth waiting for her treat.
“Maya! Where did you get that?” demanded Katherine, taking the comb and throwing her a fish. “I know where she got it,” declared Hilda climbing out of the tank with a handful of items still wet from their watery, resting place. “What’s all this?” Katherine asked, obviously confused.
注意：(1)续写词数应为150个左右;
(2)请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“This is Maya’s secret,” Hilda said with a big smile.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Now Katherine realized what had been going on.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Melati and Isabel deeply love their home on the island, surrounded by tropical rain forests, green fields, and a vast ocean. Enjoying a swim at their local beach was once a daily pleasure for them. But when Melati was fifteen, and Isabel just ten, the sisters started to lose their enthusiasm for swimming in the waters near their borne. More often than not, plastic bags would be around them as they swam and some were scattered on the beach. They got really upset about that.
Melati didn’t think much about it until one day her teacher gave a lesson on some world heroes. Each of those people had sparked movements of positive changes in the world. They believed in the impact they could have and they did inspire more people to do something meaningful. After school, Melati walked home slowly in silence, concerned about the vast amount of plastic rubbish on the beach. The heroes crossed her mind. If they could do it, we could do it too, she thought. The idea lit her up. She couldn’t wait to share what she thought with Isabel and quickened her pace.
“So many plastic bags around! The beach is dirty and messy! It’s so terrible! We have lost the clean and beautiful beach. Can’t we do something to get it back?” Melati said heartily. Isabel felt a bit puzzled at what to do, but she also had a strong desire to do something. Picturing a beach as fascinating as before in mind, the pair jumped with joy.
They talked a lot, anxious to know how Dad and Mom would respond to their ideas. That night when the family sat by the dinner table, the sisters eagerly got their ideas across. While Mom and Dad listened to the girls carefully, their eyes shone. “How amazing that would be! We are so proud of you!” Dad exclaimed. Mom came up, gave them a thumb up and hugged the sisters.
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。
Melati and Isabel decided to make a positive impact straight away.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________One month later, Melati received a call from the local newspaper.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________9 . Adapting to technological advances is a defining part of the 21st-century life. Just two months after being launched in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has already reached an audience of over 100 million people. While ChatGPT threatens to change writing and writing-related work, the Mesopotamians, who lived 4,000 years ago in a geographical area centered in modern-day Iraq, went through this kind of far-reaching change before us.
Ancient Mesopotamia was home to many of civilization’s early developments. Its people were world leaders in adapting to technological and cultural changes. They invented the wheel and agriculture, and pioneered advances in mathematics and urbanization. These breakthroughs are reflected in cuneiform(楔形文字)literature，one of the oldest known forms of writing.
In its literature, Mesopotamians don’t present cultural and technological advances as consistently beneficial.They often represent new technologies being controlled in the service of human conflict and mostly serving the interests of those with high social positions. In some ways，the representation of new technologies in its literature echoes(映现)contemporary concerns about AI: fears of increasing social inequalities and its potential use in information war.
In recent years，AI—the newest form of writing—has been used to decipher(破译)the oldest: cuneiform literature.In broader fields,the boundaries of how AI may be used haven’t been clearly explained.In January,for example, a top international AI conference banned the use of AI tools for writing scientific papers.
Humans have been struggling to invent, use and adapt to technology since our earliest civilizations. But the technology and resulting knowledge are not always evenly distributed. Knowing how we adapted to changing technology in the past helps us more fully understand the human condition and may even help us prepare for the future.
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly talk about concerning Mesopotamians?| A．Their adaptation to threats. |
| B．Their influences on writing. |
| C．Their contribution to literature. |
| D．Their achievements in civilization. |
| A．They prevent human conflict. |
| B．They bring about hidden dangers. |
| C．They take away people’s concerns. |
| D．They lower people’s social status. |
| A．Its use in literature is popular. |
| B．It is not allowed to finish papers. |
| C．Its range of application is undefined. |
| D．It is not accepted in broader fields. |
| A．How People Can Use the Latest Technology |
| B．How ChatGPT Will Threaten Writing and Work |
| C．What AI Will Do by Learning Cuneiform Literature |
| D．What History Can Teach Us About New Tech’s Impact |
10 . That dinosaurs ate the mammals (哺乳动物) that ran beneath their feet is not in doubt. Now an extraordinary fossil newly described in Scientific Reports, unearthed by a team led by Gang Han at Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology in China, shows that sometimes the tables were turned.
The fossil -dated to about 125 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period-was formed when a flow of boiling volcanic mud swallowed two animals seemingly locked in a life-and-death fight. The one on top is a mammal. This animal is a herbivorous species closely related to the Triceratops (三角恐龙). Animal interactions such as this are exceptionally cam e in the fossil record.
One possibility is that the mammal was eating something already dead, other than hunting live prey. These days it is uncommon for small mammals to attack much larger animals. But it is not unheard of. And Dr. Han and his colleagues point out that those mammals which eat dead bodies typically leave tooth marks all over the bones of the animals. The dinosaur’s remains show no such marks. There is also a chance the fossil could be a fake. More and more convincing fake s have emerged, as this one did -though Dr. Han and his colleagues argue that the complexly connected nature of the skeletons (骨骼) makes that unlikely, too.
Assuming it is genuine, the discovery serves as a reminder that not all dinosaurs were enormous during the Cretaceous and not all mammals were tiny. From nose to tail, the dinosaur is just 1.2 meters long. The mammal is a bit under half a meter in length. Despite being half the size, the mammal has one paw firmly wrapped around one of its prey’s limbs, and another pulling on its jaw. It is biting down on the dinosaur’s chest, and has ripped off two of its ribs. Before they were interrupted, it seems that the mammal was winning.
1. Which idiom is closest in meaning to underlined part “the tables were turned” in paragraph 1?| A．The fittest survives. | B．The hunters become hunted. |
| C．Fortune always favors the brave. | D．The truth will always come to light. |
| A．To prove the fossil was fake. | B．To show the forming of the fossil. |
| C．To illustrate the process of hunting. | D．To suggest the dinosaur was hunted alive. |
| A．The size of the fossil. | B．The absence of fake fossils. |
| C．The complexity of the skeletons. | D．The consistency of the opinions. |
| A．It offers a cause. | B．It highlights a solution. |
| C．It justifies the conclusion. | D．It provides a new discovery. |
