This Friday brought a mix of emotions—both excitement and disappointment — all because of a flyer from school. When I got home, Mum saw the flyer in my hand and asked, “What’s this?”
“A flyer for a five-day art camp,” I explained. “But Emily can’t go.”
“Would you like to attend?”Mum asked. “You’ve always loved art.” Her words reminded me of what Emily had said earlier: “Tessa, you’re the real artist. My brother thought the roses I painted were rocket ships.” I sighed. Mum patted my back. She knew I had a hard time jumping into something with no familiar faces around. “Maybe next year.”
“Maybe,” I echoed. Then I told Mum I wanted to go outside to draw the Westons’ pine tree (松树). She nodded with an encouraging smile.
As I walked into the bright sunshine, I couldn’t help but think about the art camp. I wished I felt a little bit braver. Emily could make friends with a whole bus of kids in ten minutes, but my stomach felt like a little boat tossed in a heavy storm when I was surrounded by strangers... By the time I started drawing, I had made up my mind to forget about the art camp.
I began by drawing the pine tree’s strong and straight trunk, and then added the beautiful branches, making sure the upper ones lifted gently towards the sun. Lost in my work, I jumped when I heard Mr. Weston speak up, “You’ve done a great job showing the strength of that tree on paper.”
“Thanks,” I smiled, glancing up.
As I drew the needles to the branches, Mr. Weston told me something I never knew about pines: If you plant the root ball too deep, the tree dies. Their roots grow out, not down—to get enough water and grow tall.
“You have a good eye, Tessa.”With these words, Mr. Weston nodded goodbye.
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。
Paragraph 1: His words made me pause and think.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2: The next Monday, I signed up for the camp.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . When I was seven, my father gave me a watch, Timex. It was my first watch. I loved it, wore it for years, and haven’t had another one since it stopped clicking a decade ago. Why? Because I don’t
This is
Watches are now categorized as “investments”. A 1994 Philippe recently sold for nearly £350,000, while 1960s Rolexes have gone from £15,000 to £30,000 plus in a year. But a watch is not an investment. It’s a(n)
| A．own | B．wear | C．choose | D．need |
| A．devices | B．phones | C．watches | D．friends |
| A．minds | B．wrists | C．bags | D．hands |
| A．young | B．sensitive | C．proud | D．wise |
| A．regularly | B． apparently | C．generously | D．usually |
| A．prices | B．salaries | C．operations | D．applications |
| A．unexpected | B．fashionable | C．silly | D．reasonable |
| A．functions | B．charges | C．operations | D．applications |
| A．interest | B．direction | C．courage | D．fortune |
| A．come up | B．brightened up | C．closed down | D．moved on |
| A．appreciate | B．set | C．promote | D．make |
| A．toy | B．memory | C．reward | D．invention |
| A．designer | B．admirer | C．producer | D．owner |
| A．originally | B．suddenly | C．particularly | D．constantly |
| A．priceless | B．pocket | C．childhood | D．poor |
Sophie had to move to a new school in the town from her own village with her family because her father got a new job in a company. At the beginning, she used to sit alone in the class and then one day a girl, Nia, from her class talked to her, hoping that they could be friends. Nia was a modern girl born and brought up in the town. She was kind and a loving girl.
Nia never really had many friends because she used to choose her friends very wisely. When Nia came to Sophie with the hand of friendship, Sophie did not think even for a second and accepted her friendship as she needed friends. As the days passed by, Nia and Sophie had already developed a good friendship. They then promised that they would focus on the better things they would do for each other if they made mistakes.
Soon Sophie made many friends like Stephen, George, Josh and Ernie. She spent a lot of time with most of them as close friends and almost forgot about Nia. One day Sophie along with all her friends decided to do something adventurous: to light up firecrackers (鞭炮) behind the office building.
As word spread very fast among teenagers, Nia heard about it and told her to be aware of her real friends but Sophie paid no attention to it. Nia then knew that Sophie would not be so careful so she decided to look out for Sophie without her knowledge.
When they were pushing Sophie out to light up the crackers with a candle, Stephen saw a teacher coming out of the office room. He waved to the others to run away but left Sophie alone there.
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。
The teacher noticed Sophie and shouted, “Stop!”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________In the headmaster’s room, Nia pulled out her phone.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 . An essential writing skill is the ability to use plain language effectively to convey ideas clearly. Plain language involves using direct and accessible language with a straightforward structure. To write in plain language, it is important to follow certain guidelines.
Plain language avoids using vocabulary that requires specialized knowledge. If you work in IT, you can comfortably use the word “latency” with your colleagues.
Plain language is more than word choices, though. It also involves structuring writing to prioritize clarity.
It is important to note that not every guideline for plain writing will apply to every piece of writing. The ultimate goal is to create contents that are accessible and easily understood. By using plain language, you demonstrate respect for your readers’ time and intelligence.
| A．That is because they know what it means. |
| B．This can be achieved in the following ways. |
| C．Thus, it develops positive relationships with them. |
| D．In many cases, this means writing in the second person point of view. |
| E．One key aspect of plain writing is ensuring sentences are as short as possible. |
| F．This can be especially important for those who speak English as a second language. |
| G．Plain language reduces the risk of misunderstandings caused by confusing language choices. |
5 . Most airplanes are constructed with seats in rows of two or three Mathematically, someone in my family of five has to sit by a
From the time I could speak, I realized that overcoming communication
Since kindergarten, I have loved Chinese culture. In my Junior year of high school, I
Thanks to the strangers in my life, I learn that one must embrace (拥抱) certain new experience. I’m so
| A．kid | B．stranger | C．senior | D．pilot |
| A．possibility | B．mistake | C．task | D．honor |
| A．skills | B．relationships | C．barriers | D．ideas |
| A．owning | B．unlocking | C．ensuring | D．maintaining |
| A．depressed | B．weak | C．deaf | D．blind |
| A．struggling | B．asking | C．wishing | D．helping |
| A．virtual | B．abstract | C．risky | D．difficult |
| A．talent | B．habit | C．passion | D．case |
| A．found | B．valued | C．earned | D．donated |
| A．inconvenient | B．unnecessary | C．unable | D．impatient |
| A．invite | B．encourage | C．train | D．represent |
| A．happiness | B．friendships | C．achievements | D．knowledge |
| A．powerful | B．willing | C．comfortable | D．grateful |
| A．put off | B．add up | C．cut down | D．lead to |
| A．suddenly | B．definitely | C．gradually | D．accidentally |
6 . Researchers have long known that the brain links kinds of new facts, related or not, when they are learned about the same time. For the first time, scientists have made real headway in recording routes in the brain of that kind of contextual memory, the frequent change of thoughts and emotions that surrounds every piece of newly learned information.
The recordings, taken from the brains of people awaiting surgery for epilepsy (癫痫), suggest that new memories of even abstract facts are encoded (编码) in a brain-cell order that also contains information about what else was happening during and just before the memory was formed.
In the new study, doctors from the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University took recordings from a small piece of metal implanted in the brains of 69 people with severe epilepsy. The implants allow doctors to pinpoint the location of the flash floods of brain activity that cause epileptic happening. The patients performed a simple memory task. They watched a series of nouns appear on a computer screen, and after a brief disturbance recalled as many of the words as they could, in any order. Repeated trials, with different lists of words, showed a predictable effect: The participants tended to remember the words in groups, beginning with one and recalling those that were just before or after.
This pattern, which scientists call the neighborhood effect, is similar to what often happens in the card game concentration, in which players try to identify pairs in a row of cards lying face-down. Pairs overturned close are often remembered together. The way the process works, the researchers say, is something like reconstructing a night’s activities after a hangover: remembering a fact (a broken table) recalls a scene (dancing), which in turn brings to mind more facts, like the other people who were there.
Sure enough, the people in the study whose neural (神经) updating signals were strongest showed the most striking pattern of remembering words in groups. “When you activate one memory, you are reactivating a little bit of what was happening around the time the memory was formed, and this process is what gives you that feeling of time travel,” said Dr Michael J. Kahana.
1. What does “contextual memory” refer to according to the text?| A．Memories about the past facts. | B．Unrelated facts linked together. |
| C．Ideas and feelings around new facts. | D．New facts encoded into brain alone. |
| A．To track the brain activity of contextual memory. | B．To find the brain activity causing epilepsy. |
| C．To show the formation of memory. | D．To test the new cure for epilepsy. |
| A．Implication. | B．Similarity. | C．Direction. | D．Progress. |
| A．The feature of the research method. | B．The category of the research subjects. |
| C．A brief summary of the research process. | D．A further explanation of the research results. |
7 . An atmospheric researcher Lubna Dada, who is part of an international project called CLOUD, and her team conducted a new study. The study looks at the role of trees and the natural compounds (混合物) they release into the atmosphere in cloud formation. The goal is to more precisely understand the climate before the Industrial Revolution — and how it’s changed since.
Clouds are not only important for the weather — they also help shape the climate. Some clouds act as a layer of protection between incoming solar radiation and Earth, cooling the atmosphere. Other clouds do the opposite: they act like a blanket and trap heat.
“But many current climate models don’t account for either the warming or cooling effects of clouds, or the role aerosols play in cloud formation. That is the biggest uncertainty in climate science at present.” Dada says.
Dada and the team are trying to figure it out using a steel, cylindrical room that roughly recreates the atmosphere. To do that, the team covers the room with tape. It has lights that seem like different layers of the atmosphere, and the researchers can change the humidity and temperature levels to create a given geographic location. Then, Dada and her team can add specific vapors into the room to study their effects. Dada says that previous research has looked at the effects of two kinds of organic emissions released by plants: monoterpenes and isoprene. But another kind of compound, sesquiterpenes (倍半萜烯), has largely been ignored.
In a recent study from the CLOUD project, scientists tested the effects of sesquiterpenes on cloud formation. They added all three compounds — monoterpenes, isoprene and sesquiterpenes — into the CLOUD room to see how many new particles (微粒) formed. They found that sesquiterpenes formed ten times more particles than the other two substances at the same concentrations.
Dada says this finding will help scientists understand the role natural emissions played in the preindustrial climate and how much humans have changed that.
1. Why did the researchers conduct the study?| A．To recreate the preindustrial climate. |
| B．To explore the warming effects of clouds. |
| C．To understand cloud formation and climate changes better. |
| D．To access the impact of trees on weather patterns more precisely. |
| A．Climate model. | B．Cloud formation. |
| C．The cooling effect of clouds. | D．The warming effect of clouds. |
| A．It plays a significant role in cloud formation. |
| B．It is more important than the other two compounds. |
| C．It has been largely ignored in the previous research. |
| D．It forms less particles than the other two compounds. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Finance. | C．Culture. | D．Environment. |
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.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________In the town of Willowbrook, young Sarah was in a state of great excitement. Her school was putting on its annual play, and she had been offered a principal role. The school hall had been abuzz for weeks with rehearsals, prop (道具) preparations, and the students practicing their lines. Sarah had spent countless hours rehearsing, wanting to get every word and movement absolutely right.
However, underlying her anticipation was a growing sadness. Sarah’s dad, Mr Thompson, worked as an engineer in a big city, and his job often kept him away from home for a long time, which meant he frequently missed out on most of the special moments in Sarah’s life. This play seemed to be another addition to that growing list. He had a vital business meeting on the same day, and Sarah, although understanding, couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Her classmates talked excitedly about their families coming to watch, increasing her sense of loss.
It was bright and sunny on the day of the play. The school’s hall was noisy with students. Students in costumes rushed about, teachers gave last-minute instructions, and the air was thick with anticipation. Sarah peeped out from behind the curtains and saw the hall filling up with eager parents, siblings, and friends. Every seat was taken, except one — her dad’s.
The play started on time with Sarah and her classmates’ performance being the first. The actors delivered their lines with passion and the audience responded with laughter and applause at all the right moments. Sarah played her part with a mix of excitement and longing, wishing her dad could see her shine.
Halfway through, the host called for a surprise guest to enter. He described him as a “mysterious stranger” whose brief appearance would provide a turning point in the plot. As the lights dimmed slightly and suspenseful music played, a tall figure stepped onto the stage.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150个左右；
2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Sarah’s heart jumped faster.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When the final scene concluded and the curtains drew to a close, applause thundered through the hall.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________10 . All I needed to do to earn the two dollars was to clean her house for a few hours after school. It was a beautiful house with things that were common in her neighborhood, absent in mine.
Working for her brought me a sense of pride, not only because I could immerse myself in little luxuries like movies and candy, but also because I contributed half of my earnings to my mother, ensuring they were used for necessities. I was not like the children in folktales: burdensome mouths to feed, problems so severe that they were abandoned to the forest. I had a status that doing routine chores in my house did not provide — and it earned me a slow smile and confirmations that I was adult-like, not childlike.
Little by little, I got better at cleaning her house — good enough to be given more to do. After struggling to move the piano, my limbs ached terribly. Despite wanting to decline or voice my discomfort, I feared losing my job and the independence and respect it afforded me. She began to offer me her clothes, for a price. Impressed by these worn things, which looked simply elegant to a little girl who had only two dresses to wear to school, I bought a few.
Still, I had trouble summoning up (鼓起) the courage to object to the increasing demands she made. Despite feeling overwhelmed, I hesitated to voice my concerns, knowing my mother would urge me to quit. However, one day while alone in the kitchen with my father, I expressed my disappointment. In any case, he put down his cup of coffee and said, “Whatever the work is, do it well — not for the boss but for yourself. You make the job; it doesn’t make you. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.”
I have worked for all sorts of people since then, geniuses and fools, quick-witted and dull, big-hearted and narrow. I’ve had many kinds of jobs, but since that conversation with my father, I have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself, and I have never placed the security of a job above my self-worth and family value.
1. What mainly enabled the author to bear the burden of work?| A．Abundant exposure to entertainment. |
| B．Satisfaction gained from social work. |
| C．Inborn abilities to handle work stress. |
| D．Pride in shouldering family obligations. |
| A．Determined and independent. | B．Responsible but innocent. |
| C．Family-oriented and humorous. | D．Ambitious but stubborn. |
| A．Don’t abandon her moral principles. |
| B．Don’t be pessimistic about her identity. |
| C．Try to express her dissatisfaction in a free way. |
| D．Try to make a distinction between work and life. |
| A．Success isn’t always guaranteed by hard work alone. |
| B．Family support can alleviate the pain of challenging work. |
| C．Don’t regard work achievement as a criterion for defining oneself. |
| D．Social expectations may lead individuals away from their genuine goals. |
