1 . Extreme land use combined with warming temperatures is pushing insect ecosystems toward collapse in some parts of the world, scientists reported Wednesday.
The study, published in the journal Nature, identified for the first time a clear and alarming link between the climate crisis and high-intensity agriculture and showed that, in places where those impacts are particularly high, insect abundance has already dropped by nearly 50%, while the number of species has been reduced by 27%.
These findings cause huge concerns, according to Charlotte Outhwaite, the lead author on the study and researcher at the University College London, given the important role of insects in local ecosystems, pollination (授粉) and food production, and note that losing insects could threaten human health and food security.
“Three quarters of our crops depend on insect pollinators,” Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex in the UK, previously told CNN. “Without insects, crops will begin to fail. We won’t have things like strawberries. We can’t feed 8 billion people.”
Scientists say, extreme land use has a link with the climate crisis. Clearing natural habitats for agriculture can dramatically change the area’s local climate and cause temperature extremes. Researchers found evident declines in insect populations in warmer areas, particularly in the tropics. They concluded that in areas with less agriculture, less climate warming, and a nearby natural habitat, insects only declined by 7%, compared to the 63% decrease in areas with less natural habitat cover.
Outhwaite told CNN there are things we can do to help prevent this crisis, like planting more native species and wildflowers, and reducing chemicals used in gardens. “It’s also probably a good idea to think about where the foods that we are buying are being sourced from,” Outwaite said. “So if they’re being sourced from tropical countries, there’s probably going to be a high impact on biodiversity there.”
1. Why does the author quote Dave Goulson’s words in the paragraph 4?| A．To emphasize the importance of insects to human life. |
| B．To provide evidence for the decline in insect populations. |
| C．To suggest potential solutions to prevent the decline of insects. |
| D．To show the importance of preserving natural habitats for insects. |
| A．Making full use of land in colder areas. | B．Preserving habitats cover in colder areas. |
| C．Planting more native species in warmer areas. | D．Expanding agriculture production in tropics. |
| A．The efforts that have been made to protect insects. |
| B．The suggestions on how to protect the diversity of insects. |
| C．The reasons why we should preserve the diversity of insects. |
| D．The advice on what kind of products to buy to avoid insect crisis. |
| A．Agriculture Harms Ecosystems | B．Reasons for Endangered Insect Ecosystems |
| C．Insect Ecosystems Need Help | D．Efforts Made to Save Insect Ecosystems |
My name is Wen Yu, but you can call me “Fish”. I want to talk about the time I went to the US to meet my American pen pal Drew, but first I need to go back a little bit to explain things.
I was a second-year junior high schooler when my English teacher, Ms. Gao, had us experiment with a pen pal program set up through our school. This was an amazing opportunity at the time since it meant we could use our English skills to communicate with other teenagers the same age as us around the world through email! Still, I was a bit shy and nervous since I knew my English was pretty poor; but at the same time, I was excited to make a new friend and was determined to improve with this new opportunity presented to me.
Ms. Gao assigned me to write emails with a boy named Drew in the US. He was from a city called Cincinnati in Ohio. I knew a little about the biggest cities in the US— New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago— But Cincinnati? I had no idea where it was. Maybe it was somewhere near one of those cities?
As we continued to talk through email, I was surprised to find my English was slowly improving. I found my English going from stiff and formulaic (刻板的) to more natural and casual to match the way he wrote. I even picked up some slang (俚语) words along the way! We got to know each other’s hobbies and interests as well as our dreams and hopes for the future. Drew seemed so nice, and I found myself wanting to visit him someday and see what Cincinnati had to offer. He, too, wanted to visit Beijing and try out the local food I had told him so much about.
We continued our email conversations even after the program ended. Drew told me how long his summer break was going to be and said he’d show me around if I were to ever visit. To my surprise, that opportunity would come sooner than I thought.
注意：1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；2. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已写好；
As it turned out, my parents were planning a surprise vacation to the US.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Entering the baggage claim area (行李领取处), I finally came face-to-face with Drew.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________By the time 18-year-old Amy Waldroop returned to her grandmother’s tiny house, it was nearly midnight and she was exhausted. After a full day’s work at a flower shop, she had put in another six hours waiting tables before heading home. This was her typical weekends.
Pushing the key into the lock, she quietly opened the door so as not to wake her younger siblings. She stepped into the front room, and froze. The house was a mess: plates of half-eaten food were scattered in front of the TV; clothes, shoes and exercise books were everyone.
Amy’s eyes welled with tears. “This is just too much for me.” she thought. Terrible memories began to race through her mind. Two years before, her parents lost their lives in an accident, leaving Amy and her siblings for their grandma, Helen, who had spent half of her life in a wheelchair. The life burden fell on Amy’s shoulders, which was too much for a girl.
Life moved on. One day, walking across the school grounds, Amy found a table littered with university brochures. She browsed through pictures of spacious campuses and happy peers, all of it looking unachievable for her, given the current situation and financial conditions. But her teacher gave her unexpected hope, saying“ You could attend university for free. It would take a scholarship, though, and for that you’d need much better grades.”
During her final year of high school, Amy diligently attended classes, then went to work after school, returned to her grandmother’s house, cared for her sisters and brothers and went through homework till the early hours of the morning, struggling for her dream university.
One afternoon, she walked home from school, holding a sheet of paper tightly. It was a letter from the University of California, informing her that she would be offered a scholarship and was admitted to the university. It was what she’d been longing for, a place where she could study to become someone special-a nurse, perhaps, or maybe even a lawyer.
注意：1．续写词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式作答。
Yet the letter only made Amy struggle inside.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The next afternoon, Amy spotted the wrinkled letter she threw into the dustbin on the table when arriving home.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 . Once you get close enough to someone, it’s easy to assume they’ll be a friend for life — but friendships take work, too, and it’s important that you make time to cultivate these relationships as well.
1. “How do you think we’ve both changed since we became friends?”
There’s a good chance that you’ve been friends with those closest to you for some time, which means you’ve both changed in certain ways over the years. Shari, founder of Imperfectly Perfect Life, says it’s important to reflect on that change. “
2. “
“You don’t have to just focus on your own friendship. People vary greatly in what makes them feel most connected to others — for some it’s sharing something exciting together, while for others, it’s doing daily tasks together,” Julia, a clinical psychologist, notes.
3. “What is the best advice you’ve ever received?”
Another way you can “gain a deeper understanding of your friend’s values, beliefs, and the lessons they’ve learned along their journey” is by asking them about the best advice they’ve ever received. “This provides an opportunity to share wisdom that has had a significant impact on their personal growth,” Natalie shares. “
4.“What are your biggest dreams for your life?”
| A．What life experience has shaped you the most? |
| B．Acknowledging your growth can enhance your friendship |
| C．When do you feel most connected to the people in your life? |
| D．It’s also good to acknowledge that even the closest friendships are not perfect |
| E．You should know what your friend actually envisions for themselves in the future |
| F．Additionally, it opens the door for meaningful conversations about life’s challenges |
| G．We’ve talked to different experts to get their best advice on how to create stronger bonds |
5 . In today’s world, AI is increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives.
Artificial intelligence has revolutionized how students are measured in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing massive datasets, AI can quickly identify a student’s areas of strengths and weaknesses through the images they upload, videos they watch, and data gathered from feedback systems.
With the advancements in AI technology, each student can receive the most tailored education they need to reach their own educational goals. It can also aid in how to write an article review, potentially by being able to particularize how challenging certain elements are for students and how much further focus and practice any one student needs to accomplish their educational objectives.
In today’s ever-connected world, having access to reliable sources of information beyond normal business hours can make a huge difference in a person’s life.
| A．AI-based chatbots offer just that, providing up-to-date information 24/7. |
| B．Here are some benefits of AI for students that can help them in their studies. |
| C．These data cannot reflect the whole picture of students’ performance, though. |
| D．This timeless advantage has significantly reduced the workload for the educators. |
| E．Thus, AI-supported personalized learning could finally create equal access to education. |
| F．Therefore, they allow us to efficiently access services without worrying about time limit. |
| G．It will also better identify potential areas for improvement in teaching and evaluating students. |
6 . I’m in a coffee shop in Manhattan and I’m about to become the most disliked person in the room. First, I’m going to interrupt the man reading quietly near the window and ask for a drink of his latte. Next, I’m going to ask the line of people waiting to pay if I can cut to the front of the queue. This is how I chose to spend my last vacation. Here’s why.
Growing up, all I ever heard about was “EQ.” It was the mid-1990s, and psychologist Daniel Goleman had just popularized the concept of emotional intelligence. Unlike IQ, which tracked conventional measures of intelligence like reasoning and recall, EQ measured the ability to understand other people — to listen, to empathize (共情), and to appreciate.
My mother, an elementary school principal, prized brains and hard work, but she placed a special emphasis on Goleman’s new idea. To her, EQ was the elixir (万能药) that separated the good students from the great after they left school. She was determined to send me into the adult world with as much of this elixir as possible.
But when I finally began my first job, I noticed a second elixir in the pockets of some of my colleagues. It gave their opinions extra weight and their decisions added impact. Strangest of all, it seemed like the anti-EQ: Instead of knowing how to make others feel good, this elixir gave people the courage to do the opposite — to say things others didn’t want to hear.
This was assertiveness (魄力). It boiled down to the command of a single skill: the ability to have uncomfortable conversations. Assertive people — those with high “AQ”— ask for things they want, decline things they don’t, provide constructive feedback, and engage in direct confrontation (对峙) and debate.
A lifetime improving my EQ helped me empathize with others, but it also left me overly sensitive to situations where I had to say or do things that might make others unhappy. While I didn’t avoid conflict, I was always frustrated by my powerlessness when I had to say or do something that could upset someone. This is my problem and I’m working on it.
1. Why did the author act that way in the coffee shop?| A．To improve a skill. | B．To test a concept. |
| C．To advocate a new idea. | D．To have a unique vacation. |
| A．She thought little of IQ. |
| B．She popularized Goleman’s idea. |
| C．She was a strict mother and principal. |
| D．She valued EQ as the key to greatness. |
| A．EQ. | B．AQ. | C．Empathy. | D．Courage. |
| A．successful leaders | B．people pleasers |
| C．terrible complainers | D．pleasure seekers |
My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, a busy bee, sent me to the store for a box of cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes on my own.
When I walked into the produce section of the Winn-Dixie grocery store to pick out my two tomatoes, I almost bumped right into the store manager. He was standing there all red-faced, screaming and waving his arms around.
“Who let a dog in here?” he kept on shouting. “Who let a dirty dog in here?” At first, I didn’t see a dog. There were just a lot of vegetables rolling around on the floor, tomatoes and onions and green peppers.
And there was what seemed like a whole army of Winn-Dixie employees running around waving their arms just the same way the store manager was waving his.
And then the dog came running around the corner. He was a big dog. And ugly. And he looked like he was having a real good time. His tongue was hanging out and he was wagging his tail. He stopped sharply and smiled right at me. I had never before in my life seen a dog smile, but that is what he did. He pulled back his lips and showed me all his teeth. Then he wagged his tail so hard that he knocked some oranges off a display, and they went rolling everywhere, mixing in with the tomatoes and onions and green peppers.
The manager screamed, “Somebody grab that dog!” The dog went running over to the manager, wagging his tail and smiling. He stood up on his hind legs. You could tell that all he wanted to do was get face to face with the manager and thank him for the good time he was having in the produce department, but somehow he ended up knocking the manager over. And the manager must have been having a bad day, because lying there on the floor, right in front of everybody, he started to cry. The dog leaned over him, real concerned, and licked his face. “Please,” said the manager. “Somebody call the pound (流浪狗收容所).”
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。
“Wait a minute!” I shouted loudly.
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The manager sat up and stared at me, like maybe I was making fun of him.
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Billy, a fourth-grade student at a primary school in Florida, was bullied for his DIY hand-drawn logo of the University of Tennessee(the UT), but this made students of the UT act in support and the UT even turned his drawing into an official T-shirt.
It all started at “College Colors Day” on August 30. On that day, the primary school students were invited to wear their favorite university’s football team’s colors. Billy, wore an orange T-shirt representing his favorite university, the UT. He took it one step further to draw his own UT logo with pen and paper and put it to his T-shirt. Billy excitedly showed his T-shirt to Laura, a fourth-grade teacher at the school. She was greatly impressed and praised him for his wonderful idea.
But after lunch, Billy came back to Laura’s office, crying. Billy was upset and hurt because some girls at the lunch table had made fun of the hand-drawn logo on his T-shirt. Laura knew sometimes kids could say really cruel words. She knew although the logo was not well-drawn and of course not the most beautiful, Billy had tried his best to use the resources he had available to him to take part in College Colors Day in his own way.
In an effort to cheer him up, Laura wrote in a post on Facebook, a popular social media website, on Wednesday that one of her students was “SO EXCITED” to show her his orange T-shirt pinned with a hand-drawn “UT” logo, but was made fun of. Laura wrote that she was planning to buy him an official UT T-shirt to make it a little extra special for Billy and ended the post by asking if any of her Facebook friends had any connections to the UT. What happened next made her shocked.
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。Her post spread rapidly on Facebook.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When receiving and opening the surprise box, Billy couldn’t believe his eyes.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________9 . When margarine (人造黄油) was first sold in the 1800s, plentiful alarmist words were uttered about it. However, it was simply a cream of vegetable oil and water, a processed, more sustainable and healthier alternative to an animal product. Anxiety about new foods and how they are produced continues today. Public discussions are full of concerns that “ultra-processed foods” or “UPFs” are downright unhealthy. One particular category in a fierce spotlight is plant-based meats. But how and where food is made doesn’t determine how safe or nutritious it is.
The term UPFs was first used in 2009 by Carlos Monteiro, a nutritionist. In a 2017 paper, he said he was worried that the shared experience of cooking was being increasingly lost and people weren’t eating together. In particular, he was seeing rising rates of diabetes and obesity. Keen to identify the root cause of these issues, he focused on food not made at home, but in factories. But the thing is, as Monteiro has stated openly, the UPF categorisation was never designed to group foods on the basis of nutrition.
Just like pork sausages and chicken popcorn, plant-based alternatives are made in factories, so are considered UPFs. But unlike those animal products, they don’t require antibiotics (抗生素) or hormones during production, require up to 96 percent less land, have carbon emissions up to 98 percent lower, need up to 99 percent less water and result in 100 percent fewer animals dying.
And side by side, they are almost always healthier than the over-processed animal meat products they replace, especially on fat and fibre content. Just compare the labels on the packets next time you are in the supermarket.
Many loud voices are raising concerns, suggesting that all UPFs, especially plant-based meats, are “unnatural”, “fake” and “full of chemicals”. We are seeing history repeat itself, and a fear of new foods being aroused all over again. But the science is unmistakably clear: diets rich in plant-based options are better for both people and the planet, factory or no factory.
1. Why does the author mention margarine in paragraph 1?| A．To stress the sales dilemma margarine faced before. |
| B．To illustrate people’s misunderstanding about margarine. |
| C．To show the ignored benefits of margarine to people’s health. |
| D．To emphasize people’s longstanding worry about novel foods. |
| A．To classify the food made at home. |
| B．To encourage people to cook and eat together. |
| C．To discover the cause of some rising health problems. |
| D．To determine the nutrition level of factory-produced food. |
| A．Plant-based meats are more ecofriendly. |
| B．Plant-based meats shouldn’t be considered as UPFs. |
| C．Plant-based meats will replace UPF animal meat products. |
| D．Plant-based meats are healthier than sausages and popcorn. |
| A．Unnecessary. | B．Temporary. | C．Reasonable. | D．Alarming. |
I’m good at making excuses. I came up with a new one every time the idea of returning to college presented itself. I had enrolled in a university at 21 but later quit. As the years passed, I regretted not finishing my English degree. But I always comforted myself with excuses — I have three little ones who need me at home. I’m busy with the children’s school activities. I can’t go back to school at 50. Old dogs can’t learn new tricks.
The truth was that I was just plain scared to go back to school. What if I needed remedial (补习的) courses? What if a professor called attention to me? What if I walked into a classroom and there was nowhere to sit? What if I stood out in a sea of young faces?
After my children finished college, they insisted it was my turn, so I called Dalton State College and set up a time to take the Compass Test to see if I needed remedial courses. The next day, when I was on the highway heading there, Rachel, my middle child called. When she learned my destination, I heard the pride in her voice. “You’ve got this, Mama!”
That was all it took. Hot tears tumbled down my cheeks as she spoke words of encouragement to me. It turned out that I scored high on the English test but would need to take two remedial courses for the math section. But I didn’t care. After decades of excuses, I’d finally thrown my leg over the high fence of fear. I couldn’t wait to register for classes.
My first course was U. S. History. I’ve never been good with dates, but the professor calmed my nerves. “I don’t care about dates, but I expect you to know the names of significant individuals. For instance, who was the first person to set foot on the moon?”
“Neil Armstrong,” chorused several students.
“Does anyone know when that event took place?”
My heart leapt at the question, because I was celebrating my fifteenth birthday on that day!
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。
Since it might be the only question I could answer, I sheepishly raised my hand.
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Other fears didn’t turn into reality either.
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