When I was seven years old, my family moved from Mexico to America. In Mexico, I was a cheerful girl who loved making people laugh with my jokes and inventing fun games to play with my friends. However, when I arrived in America, I found it hard to fit in, and I became quieter.
We lived in a small house with a modest yard where we grew vegetables—my responsibility. While I took pride in watching them grow, there were times when I dreamed of having a beautiful garden like my schoolmate Luella’s, with its delicate tulips (郁金香). Although Luella lived in the same neighborhood as me, we barely knew each other.
It was after a tornado that Luella and I finally became close friends.
The tornado struck on a Sunday afternoon.The gentle breeze transformed into a strong wind, and thick gray clouds filled the sky. Gradually, the tornado took shape, starting as a thin rope and growing into a large black funnel (漏斗). My entire family gathered in the bathroom, seeking shelter from the storm. Terrified, I sat close to my mom, knees in my chest. After the storm had passed, our worries and fears were replaced by relief that we were unharmed and that our house had remained undamaged.
As I stepped outside, I witnessed the extent of the damage the tornado had caused to our neighborhood. Across the street, a tall tree had fallen, crushing Luella’s garden in front of her yellow house. We hurried over to check on it. Fortunately, her family seemed to be away at the time, and no one was injured. However, her once-beautiful garden was in ruins, with the fallen tree destroying the tulips and debris (碎片) spread everywhere. I could only imagine how heartbroken they must feel seeing this.
Then my mom’s usual words rang in my ear, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and my family started to think about how we could help.
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。
Just at that moment, Luella’s family returned in their car.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Even after the debris was cleared, I could still sense Luella’s sorrow for her lost garden.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. How will the woman spend her summer holiday?
| A．Study at home. |
| B．Work in the shop. |
| C．Travel with her mother. |
| A．His parents. | B．His friends. | C．His brothers. |
| A．Piano. | B．Swimming. | C．English. |
We met at the Leeds Grenville SPCA. We were here to find the best fit for our little family of three. In my heart, however, I think I already knew which one was the right cat. Portia, a quiet brown tabby (斑猫), watched us with partially closed eyes, seemingly saying, “Take your time…” and I know it’s going to be me. As I neared her cage, one paw extended. Finally we decided to bring home a cat that day.
After a day or two of settling in, Portia became a sort of small and furry nanny to my kids. She would travel from room to room with us during the day, usually staying closest to my son. She wanted to sit where he sat, look out the windows from which he peered, and make courageous attempts to share whatever he was eating. At night, she would sprawl onto his lap during story time. We nicknamed her “Guardian Kitten” for the way she always wanted to be where he was, watching over him as if he were her own.
One day, I was gathering leaves while my child delighted in disturbing the piles. Portia was dozing on the porch, her cars sometimes shifting toward the sound of our voices. Then suddenly, from down the street, a desperate voice cried, “No! Come back here!” The phrase was repeated and the volume increased as the speaker drew closer. A Golden Retriever ignored his owner and reached my property first. In a split second it leaped over the low fence surrounding the front yard.
The dog rushed toward my son with boundless energy and body language that expressed that it wanted to play. “Puppy!” my son exclaimed, spreading his arms apart in a welcoming gesture. Unlike me, he was not aware that this dog would, at the very least, knock him down with its uncontained enthusiasm. And I wasn’t going to be able to close the space between us in time.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
When I was wondering how to protect my son, a scream erupted behind me.
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After a while, the owner arrived, out of breath.
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1. Where was Randy Bachman’s lost guitar found?
| A．In Japan. | B．In America. | C．In Canada. |
| A．$400. | B．$6,300. | C．$85,000. |
| A．It was hopeful. | B．It was impossible. | C．It was meaningless. |
| A．In 1940. | B．In 1957. | C．In 1960. |
1. What is the woman’s trouble?
| A．She failed in an exam. |
| B．She can’t concentrate in class. |
| C．She is still confused about the task. |
| A．Preparing a play. | B．Setting up a club. | C．Going to parties. |
| A．Sunday. | B．Friday. | C．Saturday. |
| A．To support the woman. |
| B．To support people suffering from cancer. |
| C．To collect material for his cancer research. |
1. Who is the speaker most likely talking to?
| A．New employees. | B．Patients. | C．Tourists. |
| A．On Tye Road. |
| B．Next to a small garden. |
| C．In the main building. |
| A．It’s free of charge. |
| B．It’s open all day long. |
| C．It’s in the leisure center. |
| A．It saves time. |
| B．Its service is quite good. |
| C．It has good and cheap food. |
1. What do we know about the weather last week?
| A．It was dry. | B．It was stormy. | C．It was cold. |
| A．Driving slowly. | B．Avoiding going out. | C．Preparing enough food. |
| A．Heavy rainfall. | B．Extreme cold. | C．Strong winds. |
| A．A weatherman. | B．A sports journalist. | C．A finance news host. |
8 . Traveling means going from one place to another or from one country to another. It is immensely beneficial in many ways. From cutting down on stress to lowering your chances of developing heart disease, the health benefits of traveling are huge. Furthermore, traveling fosters understanding between nations. It is an important factor in establishing world peace.
Traveling and education both are interrelated. During traveling, a traveler visits different places and comes into contact with people in different regions. Thus it provides the traveler with first-hand knowledge. The knowledge we acquire in schools and colleges is mainly bookish in nature.
In general, it can be said that traveling essentially has a great educative value. Traveling is adventurous, exciting, and a great stress buster. So, educational institutions of our country should give greater facilities to their students to undertake tours to various places of importance at home and abroad.
| A．Finally, traveling has great educative value. |
| B．Traveling widens our view and removes our stress. |
| C．Thus, traveling should be made an essential part of our education. |
| D．Traveling is to gather experience, and wisdom comes from experience. |
| E．They seldom go out of their classroom and most have a narrow outlook. |
| F．But we can know much more of them if we see those with our own eyes. |
| G．In most cases, theoretical studies have no practical applications in our life. |
9 . A new study focused on birds examines how the movements of rivers in the Amazon have contributed to that area’s exceptional biological diversity.The research team, led by the American Museum of Natural History, found that as small river systems change over time, they spur the evolution of new species. The findings also reveal previously unknown bird species in the Amazon that are only found in small areas next to these dynamic river systems, putting them at high risk of extinction.
The lowland rainforests of the Amazon River basin harbor(藏匿) more diversity than any other ecosystem on the planet. It is also a globally important biome(生物群落) containing about 18 percent of all trees on Earth and carrying more fresh water than the next seven largest river basins combined. Researchers have long wondered and hotly debated how the Amazon’s rich biodiversity arose and accumulated.
“Early evolutionary biologists like Alfred Russel Wallace noticed that many species of primates and birds differ across opposite riverbanks in the Amazon,”said the study’s lead author Lukas Musher. “Moreover, accumulating geological evidence has suggested that these rivers are highly dynamic, moving around the South American landscape over relatively short time periods, on the order of thousands or tens of thousands of years.”
To investigate how the movement of rivers across the landscape has influenced the accumulation of bird species in the Amazon, the researchers sequenced the genomes(基因组) of six species of Amazonian birds.
Because these rivers move around the landscape at different time scales, their movements can have varying outcomes for bird species: when river rearrangements occur quickly, populations of birds on each side can combine before they’ve had time to differ; when river changes happen slowly, species have a longer time to diverge from one another.
1. What does the underlined word “spur” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Stimulate. | B．Renew. | C．Pursue. | D．Interrupt. |
| A．What the Amazon’s biodiversity indicates. | B．How the Amazon’s biodiversity was formed. |
| C．Whether the Amazon has the richest biodiversity. | D．Why Amazon bird species are at risk of distinction. |
| A．There are six species of American birds. |
| B．Rivers move very slowly in South America. |
| C．Most species differ across opposite Amazon riverbanks. |
| D．River movement may lead to the Amazon’s biodiversity. |
| A．The location of river movement. | B．The populations of birds. |
| C．The speed of river movement. | D．The amount of the genomes. |
10 . Contrary to “popular opinion”, the scientific pursuit for knowledge is not a predictable process. To make new discoveries, researchers need the freedom to be creative, fail, and learn by chance. This aspect is similar to art. This is why Wageningen scientists look to artists for inspiration and exchange ideas about how to increase creative freedom.
“Science and art are two different ways to make something understandable. They both provide a perspective on reality,” says Biochemistry Professor Dolf Weijers. “From the outside, the research process looks very formal and the artistic process looks somewhat messy. But the scientific process can also unfold in an unpredictable way.”
“Scientists can learn a lot from artists,” says Weijers. “Association and creativity are central to art. Those aspects require more attention in science as the creative process is the key of science.”
“As a scientist, you use different methods, but it is equally about how you visualize(可视化) your understanding of reality and the connections that there are. This is sometimes just as visual as art,” says Weijers. One example is a recent special project in which Weijers and his colleague Joris Sprakel, professor of Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter, measured the forces that act on plant cells. A molecular(分子的)sensor was used to visualize the different forces. They showed the results in colorful images, each representing a different force.
What science and art also have in common is that they are topics of discussion in society. There are people who say that they do not value art and people who mistrust science. Weijers says, “It often creates the wrong impression because only the results of scientific studies are presented, and people do not have any insight into the process leading to discovery. As a scientist, you are doubted if you say that something is different a few years later. Then you are viewed as unreliable. But what is often poorly understood is that there are no final results in science. What we scientists can achieve in the coming period is to provide more chances for people to focus on the process. Personally, I think that the connection with art can help to lead the focus on the process than the result.”
1. What might be the “popular opinion” about the scientific discovery?| A．It is creative. | B．It can be accidental. |
| C．It allows failures. | D．It is predictable. |
| A．totally differs from the scientific one |
| B．normally looks formal and controlled |
| C．offers inspiration for scientific research |
| D．focuses on putting the messy in order |
| A．To prove that science can be visualized like art. |
| B．To stress that understanding science is difficult. |
| C．To show the value of his scientific achievements. |
| D．To tell obvious differences between science and art. |
| A．They have little to do with the discoveries. |
| B．Their process should be more open to people. |
| C．They always present unchanged final results. |
| D．Their focus is not the process but the result. |
