1 . 你学校即将开设以下社团（club）：
1. 昆剧社（Kun Opera Club）；
2. “走进大师”社（Close to Masters Club）；
3. 涂鸦社（Doodling Club）   ；
4. 文学欣赏社（Literature Appreciation Club）；
请选择你最想参加的1-2个社团并说明原因，以及对社团活动开展提出建议。（120—150字）
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2 . Directions: Write an English composition in 120-150 words according to the instructions given below in Chinese.
假如你是明启中学的学生王磊，校方将举行一次消防演习并制定如下方案。请写一封邮件给校长，内容须包括：
1. 你认为方案中需要改进的地方及改进建议；
2. 你的理由。

School Fire Drill Objective: To arouse students’ awareness of fire hazard. Date of drill: March 6th, 2024       Time of drill: 8:00 to 8:10 Scenario (场景): Fire at the teacher’s office. Action plan: 1. Trigger the fire alarm. 2. Students evacuate (疏散) from classrooms. 3. A professional firefighter teaches students how to use the fire extinguisher.

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3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Medieval (中世纪的) manners

While I was growing up, “keep your elbows (肘) off the table” was a common remark at dinner time. But, as I learned in our recent podcast episode with medieval historian and author Cybulskie, such remarks have a long history —     1     (date) all the way back to the Middle Ages.

In the medieval period, manners proved more important than today and     2     (prize) particularly by social climbers, because a firm grasp of manners was a way of standing out from the crowd: “It showed you were worldly and educated, and ready to hang out with the most important people of the day.”

But what would have ingratiated (讨好) you with a medieval host, and what kinds of social faux pas (失礼) would have ensured     3     you were never invited back? Practising good hygiene was key, particularly when it came to the dinner table. In this era, dining was a much     4     (intimate) experience, according to Cybulskie, than it is today. When sharing a meal with a dining partner, you would also be sharing cups and plates.

“Don’t blow your nose at the table, or wipe your face on the tablecloth,” Cybulskie advised. As well as listing some behaviour     5     (avoid), Cybulskie shared tips on how to be an attentive dining partner. “You would want to give the best portions of food to your partner at the table,” she said, “and make sure they were comfortable and well taken care of.”

Such social codes were set out in handbooks at the time, one of     6    , The Book of the Civilised Man, written in the early 14th century, was aimed at boys and young men — and, with advice     7     (tailor) to this audience, warned its young readers against “making bodily function jokes at the table”.

Social conventions extended     8     the dining hall. When visiting someone’s house, for instance, it was considered fashionable to wash your hands on arrival,     9     that you didn’t bring dirt inside. Though this is one custom that is in line with us in the 21st century, others feel decidedly medieval: one book asks readers “to make sure you     10     (get) down from your horse before entering someone’s house”.

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

You may think that mom-and-pop stores are gradually dying out, giving way to chain stores and big business,     1     you would be wrong. The online shopping platform Taobao is a game changer and    2     (revolutionize) the way we buy and sell.

Taobao, or “treasure hunt”, recently became the largest e-commerce website in terms of traffic, surpassing Amazon. It has 190 million    3     (register) users and serves     4     (big) marketplace in the world. Half of China’s Internet users go to Taobao, either to browse, buy or sell, according to Web information company Alexa.

    5     Taobao borrowed its original business model from eBay when it started up in 2003, the student soon became the master. Just three years later, eBay shut down its site and now Taobao controls about 80 percent of the country’s online shopping market.

It charges almost     6     to list items for sale and makes most of its money from advertising. It also plans to share transaction data with its users so they can cash it on buying trends. This allows anyone with an idea and a computer to start a viable business, doing away     7     the need for significant start-up capital.     8     opening up a store on the high street selling to passersby, the world is every Taobao user’s oyster.

A friend of mine is a typical. She opened up a store selling children’s clothing near Nuren Jie,     9     was a popular market in Beijing. It was not a great success but her online sales through Taobao went ballistic. She closed the store and is now e-commerce only.

Effectively, taobao has become the country’s high street, but with global reach.     10     China is the world’s manufacturing base, it is relatively easy for individuals to source cheap goods and sell at a reasonable markup. Micro-stores are opening in their thousands every day and delivering an amazing variety of goods.

5 . WHAT ARE RIP CURRENTS?

Rip currents are like the rivers of the sea, transporting water near the shore back out into the ocean depths. The presence of these currents can be hidden by the wild movements of the surrounding waves. This means that as well as carrying seaweed and pieces of materials quickly out to sea, they can rapidly sweep away even the strongest swimmers. Around 80 percent of all lifeguard rescues are caused by powerful rip currents pulling a swimmer into danger.

If you find yourself being pulled out to sea by an unsuspected rip current, you should remain calm, focus on staying afloat and, if you can, swim parallel to the shore. Your instincts might tell you to swim towards land, as this is where you’re aiming to get to, but the current will be too strong to swim against. Instead, aim to move across the current and into slower flowing water next to it. A rip current may only pull you just past the breaking waves, but in some cases they can take you hundreds of metres offshore. The strength of currents can be hard to predict, so it’s safest to stay on lifeguarded beaches and not to swim if you see any indication of a rip current.

1. Understanding rip currents can help ______.

A．prevent you from swimming into danger	B．transport water out into the ocean depths
C．clear away seaweed and pieces of materials	D．warn lifeguards against rescue in rip currents

2. The illustration probably explains ______.

A．difference between various currents	B．two types of zones off shore
C．an ideal route to surf in safety	D．how rip currents form

3. Which region is the path of a rip current?

A．1000 metres off the shore beyond “HEAD”.	B．The channel through the gap in a sandbar.
C．The location where a red flag is erected.	D．Over the narrow stretch of a sandbar.

6 .

A．The posters are not as good as the stalls.

B．The stall could have been more amazing.

C．The charity event was a copy of the past.

D．She was having hearing problems.

7 . Mark，一位名声越来越大的科学家，受邀给我校新生发表演说，旨在帮助年轻人更了解日新月异的世界。(inform) (汉译英)

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8 . Is This the Most Powerful Word in the English Language?

“The.” It’s present everywhere; we can’t imagine English without it. “The” tops the league tables of most frequently used words in English, accounting for 5% of every 100 words used. But why is this? The answer is two-fold. George Zipf, a 20^th-century U. S. linguist, gave a detailed explanation of the principle of least effort.     1    

The second reason is that “the” lies at the heart of English grammar. It has a function rather than a meaning. Words are split into two categories: expressions with a semantic (语义的) meaning and functional words like “the”, “to” and “for” that have a job to do. “The” can function in multiple ways. This is typical, explains Gary Thoms, assistant professor of linguistics at New York University.     2    . Helping us understand what is being referred to, “the” makes sense of nouns as a subject or an object. So even someone with a basic understanding of English can tell the difference between “I ate an apple” and “I ate the apple.”

But although “the” has no meaning in itself, “it seems to be able to do things in miraculous ways,” says Michael Rosen, a poet and author.     3    . The inclusion of “the” immediately signals something important about that goal. Perhaps it was the only one of the match? Or maybe it was a clincher (起决定性作用的事) that won the league? Context very often determines sense.

There are many exceptions regarding the use of the definite article (定冠词), for example in relation to proper nouns. We wouldn’t expect someone to say “the Jonathan” but it’s not incorrect to say “you’re not the Jonathan I thought you were”. And a football commentator (实况解说员) might deliberately say “you’ve got the Lampards in midfield” to mean players like Lampard.

    4     Yet Rosen rejects that view. While primary school children are taught to use “wow” words, choosing “exclaimed” rather than “said”, he doesn’t think any word has more or less “wow” factor than any other. It all depends on how it’s used. “power in language comes from context… “the” can be a wow word,” he says.

A．Consider the difference between “he scored a goal” and “he scored the goal”

B．This could lead to the belief that “the” is nothing more than a workhorse of the English language—functional but boring.

C．He predicted that short and simple words would be the most frequent— and he was right.

D．This simplest of words can be used for dramatic effect

E．“A super high-usage word will often develop a real flexibility,” says Thoms.

F．Even within the language, there are subtle differences in how “the” is used in British and American English.

9 . For the past three decades, companies and consumers have benefited from cross—border connections that have helped to maintain a steady supply of electronics, clothes, toys and other goods so abundant that it has managed to keep prices low across the board.

However, as the pandemic and the Russia — Ukraine conflict continue to weigh on trade and business ties, that period of plenty appears to be undergoing a partial reversal. Companies are rethinking where to source their products and are stockpiling inventory (库存), even at the potential cost of lowering their efficiency and increasing their operation expense. If the situation lasts for very long, _________could have important implications for inflation (通货膨胀) and the world economy.

American economists are debating whether recent supply chain troubles and geopolitical conflicts will result in a shake-up of global production, in which factories that had previously been sent offshore or areas with fewer tax regulations, move back to the United States or into other more stable countries. If this happens, a decades-long decline in the prices of many goods could come to an end. We may even witness a slide backwards, meaning a potential boost in prices and overall inflation as a result.

The period of global integration before the pandemic made many of the things Americans buy cheaper. Computers and other forms of technology made factories more efficient, and they rolled out sneakers, kitchen tables, and electronics at a pace unmatched in history. Companies slashed their production costs by moving factories offshore, where wages were lower. The adoption of steel shipping containers and ever larger cargo ships allowed products to be transported from Bangladesh and China to Seattle and Tupelo and everywhere in between at astonishingly low prices.

Those changes, however, had consequences for American factory workers, who saw many jobs disappear. Katherine Tai, the U. S. trade representative, said that, while American consumers have enjoyed the “luxury” of low prices for imported goods for a long time now, the system upon which it was built has always been a very “fragile” one. Americans are not just consumers, but also workers who have to compete in a global marketplace for talent where globalization “has damaged opportunities and wages for average American workers”.

“Some returning is occurring — let’s make no mistake about that.” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala., the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, said in an interview. But the data shows that most businesses are reducing their risk by building up their inventories and finding additional suppliers in low-cost countries, such as Vietnam and Mexico. This process could end up helping more deeply integtate poorer countries in Africa and other parts of the world into the global value chains, said Dr. Okonjo-Iweala.

The intertwined trajectory (轨迹) of globalization, low prices, and inflation on the whole will be closely watched by economists over the years to come. “It would certainly be a different world.” Jerome H. Powel, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said when asked about a possible move away from globalization. “It’s not obvious how dramatically conditions will change,” he said. “But it’s clear that it’s slowed down.”

1. Which of the following best fits the blank in Paragraph 2?

A．the trend of global integration

B．a shift away from fine-tuned globalization

C．the benefit of cheap and plenty goods

D．an upcoming economic crash

2. Which of the following statement is true about the shake-up of global production?

A．A potential decline in prices of goods can be expected.

B．American companies may locate their offshore factories in Africa.

C．Efficient transportation makes bulk buying convenient for Americans.

D．Inflation has a role to play in the shake-up of globalization.

3. What can be inferred from Paragraph 5?

A．Katherine Tai takes a neutral position concerning globalization.

B．American factory workers face heightened competition from domestic rivals.

C．American consumers generally benefited from global integration.

D．Exported goods lead to the lower wages of average Americans.

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．The Era of Cheap and Plenty May be Ending

B．Globalization: Crisis or Opportunities?

C．New Winners in the Post-globalization Era

D．The Future of Global Economy

10 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. appointed            B. sturdy                 C. skyrocket             D. tough             E. flock to F. at random            G. spark                  H. encounter             I. attach importance to J. critically             K. immerse

In the city of Shanghai, where the skyline reflects a blend of tradition and modernity, students face the     1     task of passing an English high school exam known for its challenging vocabulary and difficult comprehension. This examination not only tests linguistic skills but also demands a deep understanding of words in the English language.

As students dig deep into the examination, they come across a pool of words that demand both precision and creativity. The English language, known for its practical nature, challenges candidates to remove confusion or ambiguity (歧义) and present ideas with clarity. The ability to express thoughts with vivid imagery becomes a key skill when students     2     themselves in crafting essays.

The exam is not designed     3     ; instead, it follows a structure that needs students to     4     carefully. So it requires a cautious approach with great attention to details.

The students, armed with a large vocabulary and grammatical finesse read through comprehension passages that     5     intellectual curiosity. The     6     time for the test becomes a crucial factor, as candidates strive to show their linguistic techniques within the limited test time.

Science and finance become the common themes in the exam’s reading comprehension section. Students may     7    passages that require adequate knowledge of science or finance, challenging them to interpret the professional ideas in the text.

The exam’s difficulties     8     when it requires great language skills. In a globalized world, where communication crosses borders, the ability to carry one’s language proficiency (熟练度) like a portable tool becomes essential. Students are tested not only on their academic knowledge but also on their real-world language application.

Due to the linguistic challenges, students     9     preparation classes, seeking guidance from experienced educators who specialize in decoding the complexities of the exam of high risks. In many parent’s mind, these educational opportunities become invaluable as students absorb strategies to cope with the English language examination.

In conclusion, the Shanghai English high school exam is a proof of the city’s pursuit for academic excellence. In the future, these students carry with them the     10     foundation laid during their preparations for the challenging examination, and also a lifelong love for the English language.