2 . Be a Lifelong Learner

We live in a world that prizes education. But most people think of education only in terms of formal classes. When people graduate from high school or college, they usually think their education is complete. But it is possible to continue learning after finishing school.     1    

On a personal level, learning can be fun. It can deepen your conversations by giving you something interesting to talk about. And it’s good for your brain. Hobbies that require thought can help you keep your mental abilities as you age. Just as exercise makes your muscles stronger, your mind becomes sharper when you use it.

Being a lifelong learner can also help your career. Becoming an expert in an area outside of your present job gives you freedom. It allows you to take a job in another field if you want to. Also, knowledge in other areas can help you develop creative ideas in your current job.

    2     It starts with making a conscious decision to do so. You need to be determined to keep making the effort to learn when it isn’t easy. It may help to find friends who will encourage your learning. It might also help to set aside specific times to study.

Try finding time to learn throughout your day. Carry a book with you, and read when you have to wait. Audiobooks and podcasts are also helpful resources. You can listen to them while traveling or doing chores.

    3     If you want to learn how to fix appliances, try fixing some at home. If you’re learning a foreign language, find someone who speaks that language to talk to. If you’re learning facts about economics or science, explain what you’re learning to someone else.     4    

A．What does a lifelong learner look like?

B．So how do you become a lifelong learner?

C．Then you can help that person be a lifelong learner, too!

D．Finding ways to use what you learn can help you remember things.

E．Never stop discovering new things about the world around you.

F．And making the effort pays off personally and professionally.

3 .

Take Off with Historic Hiring Growth

A message from Kate Gebo

Welcome aboard!

We are so happy to have you fly with us. I’m sure you’ve thought about United as a way to travel, and with over 95,000 employees and growing, our company is also the center for rewarding careers.

I could not be prouder to lead Human Resources at United during this exciting time for our company, while we’re building the biggest and best airline in the history of aviation. Earlier this year, we announced that we are on track to hire at least 15,000 new employees by the end of this year.

When people think of career opportunities at United, they often think of being a pilot or flight attendant. In reality, our organization has a wide variety of roles in addition to our fantastic pilots and flight attendants, with jobs and functions to keep our airports running and our planes flying.   

Whether it’s for operational roles, such as ramp service employees, customer service representatives, and aircraft technicians, or for corporate roles in human resources, digital technology, and social media, we’re hiring across every function of the airline, seeking strong talent that will take us to new heights.

A role at United is not just a job; it’s a career. Many of our employees have taken on new roles in different departments throughout their tenure (聘用期), which we support to develop and invest in our workforce. In the past seven years, more than 1,500 frontline employees were promoted to management roles, and 78 % of our senior leaders were promoted internally.

Beyond the traditional career paths, we’re proud to create new paths to help our talent pipelines fulfill some of the industry’s most critical job functions. Aviate, our pilot career development program, offers aspiring and established pilots a path to the United flight deck. Calibrate is our full-time, paid apprenticeship program for those wanting to go into aircraft maintenance and other technical operational roles. Our newly launched Innovate program helps provide the skills and experiences needed to succeed in a technology career at United.

We’re hiring from coast to coast, at our seven major hubs and across a broad range of positions. If you’re ready to join me and 95,000 of the industry’s best and brightest at United, I encourage you to visit careers.united.com today to see what opportunities await you. Your career is cleared for takeoff.

United with you,

Kate Gebo

Executive Vice President,

Human Resources and Labor Relations

1. What is the main purpose of this passage?

A．Guarantee to provide first-class customer service.

B．Promote frontline employees to management roles.

C．Introduce jobs available in some departments of United.

D．Advertise for United to enroll pilots and flight attendants.

2. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A．Visit careers.united.com, and you can see positions available.

B．Employees at United can change their jobs with interest.

C．Employees have to keep their positions throughout their tenure.

D．The United is making efforts to be the biggest and best airline.

3. Which is most suitable for those wanting to be technicians?

A．The full-time, paid apprenticeship program.	B．The traditional United career path.
C．The newly launched Innovate program.	D．The new paths for talent pipelines.

4 . The Amazon is warming three times faster than the global average

It is perhaps the most ironic symbol of the life on our planet. The Amazon is the world’s largest and most bio-diverse tropical rainforest and a huge trap for carbon dioxide. The harms of _________ in this vital resource are old news. But now, the time on the clock is running out. It seems that the world’s biggest rainforest is about to turn into the world’s biggest environmental _________. “We are about to collapse,” says Luciana Gati at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. “We are in a(n) _________, we need action now.”

Gati has spent years _________ the Amazon from the air. She believes we are as little as five years from a point of no return, where rainforest begins to turn into dry land. It is also the point at which billions of tons of carbon would be _________ into the atmosphere. “It’s a nightmare,” she says.

That nightmare situation is the well-known Amazon _________ point, where the ecosystem can no longer cope with the damage of the forest cutting. Like a domino game, one brick falling will _________ the whole tower to collapse in a heap.

Warnings that this is approaching have now taken on extreme urgency. The rate of deforestation has increased sharply and is fast approaching the theoretical _________. In September, a group of more than 200 experts, including Gatti, released an assessment of the situation. The conclusion: we are on the _________ of disaster.

Scientists first began to seriously worry about a potential Amazon tipping point in about 2000, when some studies warned that a combination of climate change and deforestation could cause the rainforest to __________.

A few years later, a team of Brazilian scientists put numbers on it. They __________ that in central, southern and eastern parts of the Amazon, a loss of 40% of the forest cover from pre-industrial levels, or 3°C warming would reduce rainfall so much that the rest of the forest would die of __________ and turn into a dry land in less than a decade.

The scientists have since __________ that prediction, partly due to the global warming that has happened since 2000. The Amazon is already 1.2°C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times and is warming three times faster than the global __________. At that rate of warming, between 20 and 25% deforestation would be enough to dry up the land and destroy the Amazon completely.

“Either way, we would be wise not to exceed 20%”, says a scientist, “for the commonsense reason that there is no point in __________   the precise point of limit by tipping it.”

1.

A．fertilization

B．elimination

C．deforestation

D．frustration

2.

A．program

B．disaster

C．protection

D．regulation

3.

A．evolution

B．spotlight

C．condition

D．emergency

4.

A．measuring

B．observing

C．protecting

D．criticizing

5.

A．released

B．melted

C．turned

D．supplied

6.

A．tipping

B．disappointing

C．awarding

D．tapping

7.

A．build

B．turn

C．cause

D．make

8.

A．problem

B．prediction

C．aspect

D．limit

9.

A．base

B．edge

C．surface

D．track

10.

A．dry out

B．run down

C．pay off

D．rise up

11.

A．boasted

B．insisted

C．estimated

D．instructed

12.

A．thirst

B．starvation

C．cold

D．disease

13.

A．digested

B．revised

C．encouraged

D．previewed

14.

A．strategy

B．climate

C．average

D．system

15.

A．diagnosing

B．instructing

C．inquiring

D．discovering

5 . 那个星夜父亲划小船送我们母女去外婆家，河面平静如镜，蛙声四起，真是浪漫。(which) (汉译英)

6 . 许多经验丰富的摄影师都建议从离家近的当地景点开始拍摄旅游微视频。(What …) (汉译英)

7 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize in no more than 60 words the main idea of the passage and how it is illustrated. Use your own words as far as possible.

Kangaroos can “talk” to us

Kangaroos can “talk” to people, according to a new study. The report is the first research of its kind to be done on marsupials—a type of creature whose young get carried in skin pockets on their mother’s body. It suggests kangaroos are cleverer than previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Roehampton in the UK and the University of Sydney in Australia tested kangaroos at the Australian Reptile (爬行动物) Park, Wildlife Sydney Zoo and Kangaroo Protection Co-operative. The scientists put food in a box that the kangaroos could not open, and waited to see what the animals would do. Rather than giving up, 10 out of the 11 kangaroos actively looked at the person who had put the food in the box and then looked at the box. The researchers said this could be interpreted as the kangaroos requesting help to open the container.

Dr Alexandra Green, a co-author of the study, told The Guardian newspaper that some of the kangaroos actually approached the person and started scratching (挠) and sniffing (嗅) him, then looked back at the box. “So they were really trying to communicate,” Green said. This behaviour is not uncommon in animals. However, it is usually only seen in domesticated animals, such as pets or farm animals. The lead author of the study, Dr Alan McElligott, explained, “Through this study, we were able to see that communication between creatures can be learnt and that the behaviour of looking at humans to access food is not related to domestication. “Indeed, kangaroos showed a very similar pattern of behaviour we have seen in dogs, horses and even goats, when put to the same test,” he added.

It is hoped that the study will give people a more positive attitude towards kangaroos, which are sometimes seen as harmful creatures that damage farmers’ crops.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8 . Greening the blue

Is there a “natural” way to enhance the potential of the oceans to lock away climate-warming CO₂? Planting more trees on land can help draw down more CO₂ from the atmosphere—the basis of many plans for carbon credits that companies buy to offset their emissions (抵消其排放).     1     Seaweed forests and saltmarshes (盐碱滩) are common examples.

Some regard the potential for this “blue carbon” as huge, although as yet there is no mechanism for integrating it into carbon offsetting plans. John Virdin of Duke University in North Carolina says, “    2    ” He adds, “You have to go out and measure all the carbon that’s there, you have to show that it’s not going to be lost, you have to keep monitoring it.” Virdin and others have proposed extending an existing land-based plan called REDD + (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) to the ocean, but that is an idea whose ship has yet to sail.

    3     In March, the UK government’s climate adviser, the Climate Change Committee, found that restoring and creating seagrass and saltmarsh ecosystems in the country would only lock away a small amount of CO₂, removing “well below” 1 million tonnes a year. Nonetheless, these are efficient carbon stores according to the committee.     4    

A．Using the oceans as a solution to climate change is hardly a new idea.

B．There is still some doubt about how big the marine offsetting effect might be.

C．It’s really hard to turn blue carbon conservation and restoration into carbon credits that you can sell.

D．Something similar might work in the oceans, by stimulating the growth of marine and coastal ecosystems.

E．And conserving them is important given how much fishing and other activities have degraded them.

F．The big objection to all these plans is the possibility of negative environmental side effects.

9 .

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1. It can be learnt from the leaflet that ______.

A．no taxes of any kind are put on municipal bonds

B．Investment in municipal bonds is relatively safe

C．Hennion & Walsh are billionaire investors

D．interest rates and bond defaults go hand in hand

2. Which of the following is true about Bond Guide?

A．It shares risk-free bond investing skills.

B．It recommends bond investing specialists.

C．It offers a guaranteed investment return.

D．It proposes investing plans for reference only.

3. It can be inferred from the leaflet that municipal bonds are ______.

A．issued particularly in hard times

B．intended for Hennion & Walsh Inc.

C．sheltered by the government in a way

D．subject to the major infrastructure projects

4. Who would be the most likely target readers of this leaflet?

A．Municipal bond administrators.

B．Federal tax calculators.

C．The copyright owners of the Bond Guide.

D．Senior-citizen investors.

10 . If you search the internet these days, you’ll likely run across some strange-looking, yet cheerful cartoon characters. These computer-created people have small heads and overdone bodies. They’re created in daring color with arms and legs that look like giant wet noodles. The happy figures are often moving or doing something creative.

In 2017 Facebook paid a design team to develop a positive illustration system. One of the designers took that message to heart. She worked to show human connection, motion, energy and joy in her drawings. She “wanted to picture that sense of joy people feel when they’re sharing things together....” The name which was given to the new art form when it was completed was very appropriate. They named it Alegria, which means joy in Spanish. Before long Alegria became the go-to style for many technology and media businesses. Corporations such as Google, Airbnb and YouTube began using Alegria or art with Alegria-type similarities. Today you can find Alegria art across the internet, in print, on magazine covers and more.

Why did Alegria art become popular so quickly? There are many reasons. As websites depended on illustrations to fill space, Alegria-type art became increasingly useful. The style is flat, simple and easy to create. By comparison, more detailed art designs require extra time, skill and money to produce. Businesses also love the fact that Alegria’s characters celebrate diversity by featuring international cultural events. The illustrations convey good feelings. Those feelings help people believe they can trust the companies that feature them on their pages.

For some consumers, though, that’s a problem. These people think some companies have simply papered over their problems with positive images. They’ve failed to address their wrongdoings or make lasting changes. For many, however, Alegria is a nice visual language that represents happiness. From children hugging to couples dancing, the images are all about positive energy. All in all, it seems that Alegria is the perfect name of this playful, fun art style.

1. Which of the following features makes Alegria art style so well received quickly?

A．Its cheerful room-filling images.

B．Its trustworthy figures.

C．Its role as cultural representatives.

D．Its eye-catching details.

2. We can learn from the passage that ______.

A．Alegria images may help hide faults

B．positive images convey funny messages

C．illustrations can be audio in some way

D．small-sized cartoon characters enjoy popularity

3. Alegria is thought as the perfect name for the art style because of its ______.

A．system and creativity	B．technology and impact
C．popularity and profit	D．meaning and function