1 . Why is the library the highest building?
A Little Boy
A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people rarely visited. The house was very old and shabby and the owner hardly ever came out. When he did come out, he would not say hello to his neighbors or passers-by but simply just glared at them.
The boy knocked on the door and waited, sweating from fear of the old man. The boy’s parents told him to stay away from the house, and a lot of other neighborhood children were told the same thing from their parents.
Dusk found the boy lingering on and hesitating what to do. As he was ready to walk away, the door slowly opened. “What do you want?” the old man said impatiently. The little boy was very afraid but he had a quota (定额) to meet for school with selling the magazines. So he got up the courage and said, “Uh, Sir, I am selling these magazines and, uh, I was wondering if you would like to buy one from me.”
The old man just stared at the boy without a word. The boy could see inside the old man’s house and saw that he had dog figurines (小雕像) on the fireplace mantle. “Do you collect dogs?” The little boy asked. “Yes, I have many collections in my house. They are my family here and they are all I have.” The boy then felt sorry for the man, as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul.
“Well, I do have a magazine here for collectors. It is perfect for you. I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much.” The old man was ready to close the door on the boy and said, “No, boy. I don’t need any magazines of any kind, now goodbye.”
The little boy was sad that he was not going to make his quota with the sale. He was also sad for the old man being so alone in the house that he owned. The boy went home and then had an idea. He had a little dog figurine that he got some years ago from an aunt. The figurine did not mean nearly as much to him since he had a real live dog and a large family.
注意:1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式作答。
The little boy headed back down to the old man’s house.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________From that day on something changed inside the old man.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________In a coastal village named Seaford, lived a courageous young woman named Amelia. Amelia was known throughout Seaford for her adventurous nature. From the moment she could walk, she would eagerly run towards the crashing waves, feeling the sand between her toes and the cool spray of the ocean mist on her face. She was a woman with a strong will and possessed a heart full of kindness. Amelia’s love for the ocean was intense, and she spent most of her days exploring the beautiful beaches and sparkling waters that surrounded her house.
One sunny morning, while Amelia was walking along the shore, she noticed a group of restless seagulls abnormally circling above the crashing waves. Their unusual calls echoed (回) through the air. Concerned for their well-being, she followed their flight pattern, her instincts guiding her toward danger.
As she approached a towering cliff, Amelia gasped in horror. On a narrow ledge (岩架), high above the violent waves, was a young dolphin trapped in a thick fishing net. Its shiny body shone under the golden rays of the sun, but its freedom was cruelly limited by the trap. With each struggle, the net tightened around its delicate body, leaving painful marks on its skin. Its tail flapped helplessly, each movement a request for help, while its desperate cries for assistance echoed through the air.
A sense of urgency filled her, pushing her forward with determination and resolve. Realizing that time was tight, Amelia knew she had to act instantly to free this innocent creature from its difficult position before it submitted to exhaustion or the force of the tides.
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: Without hesitation, Amelia rushed back to the village.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2: As the dolphin was released into the waters, it hesitated for a moment.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sacrificing Hair for a Friend
My seven-year-old daughter Sue looked frightened with tears in her eyes. In front of her was a bowl of medicine, which tasted so bitter. “Sue, why don’t you take the medicine? Just for Dad’s sake, dear.” Sue softened a bit. “Dad, if I take the medicine, will you give me whatever I ask for?” “Oh sure, darling.” I replied. “Promise?” “Promise.”
Slowly and painfully, she finished taking the medicine and then looked at me with her eyes wide with expectation. “Dad, I want to have my head shaved off, this Sunday!”
“A girl child having her head shaved off? Why don’t you ask for something else? We will be sad seeing you with a clean-shaven head,” I said. “I do not want anything else,” Sue said with finality. “Dad, you promised to give me whatever I ask for. Was it not you who told me a story yesterday, and its moral that we should honor our promises no matter what?”
I had to give in.
On Monday morning, I dropped her at her school. It was a sight to watch my daughter walking towards her classroom with her head clean-shaven. She turned around and waved. I waved back with a smile. Just then, a boy got out of a car, and shouted, “Sue, please wait for me!”
What struck me was the hairless head of that boy. Then a lady got out of the car, and said to me, “Sir, that boy is my son Mike, and your daughter visited him last week. Mike is suffering from leukemia. He lost all his hair due to the side effects of the chemotherapy. He refused to come back to school for fear that he would be made fun of by the schoolmates.”
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。
“Your daughter is great indeed!” the lady continued.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sue’s story spread quickly and soon many other children showed their care for Mike in various ways.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If there was one thing that Ellen Rafferty hated more than driving, it was driving in the rain. This evening, on her way back from work, Ellen saw a little child standing by the side of the road in the pouring rain. So she hit the brakes sharply, and pulled over by the side of the road next to the child.
It was a little boy, maybe four or five, and he was shaking and hugging himself. As soon as he saw Ellen, his face. brightened. “Hello!” he said,“Are you my mommy?”
“No,”Ellen said in the icy rain. “I’m not! What are you doing here? Where are your parents?”
“Oh,” the boy said disappointingly. “I don’t know where my mom is. She left me on the road when it was raining, and I think she must be looking for me.”
“What’s your name? Where do you live?”
“I’m David. I live at the Doris Farmer Institute for Children.”
“The orphanage(孤儿院)?” asked Ellen. “But that is far!” Just then, there was a terrible flash of lightning and even more rain poured down as thunder rolled across the sky. “Come on,”Ellen said. “I’m taking you home. I’ll call the orphanage to come and fetch you.” Ellen took the boy home.
She didn’t quite know what to do with him, so she turned on a heater and wrapped him with a blanket. Then she called the orphanage and told them that she found one of their children, who named David, on the road. But the woman on the phone said it was too late and they couldn’t come to fetch him.
Sighing,Ellen hung up the phone and looked at the boy. At the same time, her cat Gandalf walked in and rubbed himself against Ellen’s legs. Ellen picked the cat up and kissed his head. “Come on, my baby,” she said softly, “Mommy’s gonna feed you...” When she looked up, she was shocked by the longing in David’s eyes,
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。
“I wish I was your cat,”he said sadly.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The next day, Ellen got into her car again and drove to the orphanage to ask about David.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6 . How would you feel if you were invited to the moon? If you found a gold coin, would you save it, give it to charity or use it for a holiday? Personality quizzes of this kind, known as “psychometrics”, have bothered many job seekers. Now, it is being applied to the oldest problem in finance: will a borrower repay?
In rich countries, lenders use credit scores to weigh risk. But just 7% of Africans and 13% of South Asians are covered by credit bureaus (征信机构). Bailey Klinger of the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), which explores new kinds of credit data, argues that psychometrics could include many more people in the financial system. Everyone has a personality, after all.
Judging character is not new. Psychometrics attempts to make it a science. The model developed by EFL has undergone many tests and adapted to different cultures. Its collected data reflect something unnoticed. For instance, young optimists are risky, but old ones are a safe bet.
Clever design cuts cheating. There are no obvious right answers; responses are cross-checked for consistency. The model monitors mouse movements for signs of indecision or distraction. When borrowers lie to get a loan, they often do so in predictable ways. In an EFL test, people are shown pictures of five drinks and asked which one they would be. Choosing water over something with small bubbles may be a sign of cheating.
This sounds fanciful, but there is evidence that it works. In one Indonesian bank, combining psychometrics with existing customer data cut default (违约) rates for small businesses by 45%. A study by the World Bank found that EFL’s model increased lending to those without a credit history.
The technique needs further development. At present, turning to credit bureaus is still the best way to tell if somebody will repay a loan. But bureaus improve more slowly than technology. Lenders will find ever more ways to look into their customers’ souls.
1. What are the figures intended to show in the second paragraph?| A．Racial discrimination from lenders. |
| B．Uncertain property of poor people. |
| C．Great risks brought by credit scores. |
| D．Current weakness of credit bureaus. |
| A．It has been greatly improved. |
| B．Its data confirm some ideas. |
| C．Its effects vary with cultures. |
| D．It can’t tell character exactly. |
| A．Borrowers’ responses. | B．Lenders’ answers. |
| C．Pictures of five drinks. | D．Drinks with bubbles. |
| A．It will replace credit bureaus. |
| B．It will be mature in the future. |
| C．It has won most lenders’ love. |
| D．It is far from satisfactory. |
7 . Ahh... Fish, chips and mushy peas! There is nothing more British than fish and chips. Freshly cooked, boiling hot fish and chips, topped with salt and seasoned with vinegar, packed in newspaper and eaten out-of-doors on a cold and wintry day — it simply cannot be beaten!
Both Lancashire and London claim to be the first to invent this famous meal. Chips were a cheap, basic food of the industrial north while fried fish was introduced in London’s East End.
Fish and chip shops were originally small family businesses, often run from the front room of the house and were commonplace by the late 19th century. Through the latter part of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the fish and chip trade expanded greatly to satisfy the needs of the growing industrial population of Great Britain. Fish and chips became vital to the diet of the ordinary people.
In 1999, the British consumed nearly 300 million servings of fish and chips. That equates to six servings for every man, woman and child in the country.
| A．It quickly became a favourite of the workers. |
| B．People soon decided to put fried fish and chips together. |
| C．John Lees owned a restaurant and sold the famous pairing. |
| D．So how, when and where did this British dish come about? |
| E．There are now around 8,500 fish and chip shops across the UK. |
| F．Some shops had to employ doormen to control the queue at busy times. |
| G．The first fish and chip shop in Lancashire is thought to have opened in 1863. |
Jessica Eaves from Guthrie, Oklahoma, who works as a volunteer helping to provide daily meals for those who have difficulty purchasing enough food to avoid hunger, recently had her wallet stolen by a man while she was grocery shopping. Most people in that situation would immediately get the authorities involved, but Jessica found another way to solve her problem, which made the man, the father of three who had lost his job, deeply moved.
“I saw this gentleman down the aisle(通道)from me,” Jessica tells us. “He was walking behind me, looking a little nervous, and when I got a couple of aisles over, I realized that my wallet was gone.”
“I spotted the man in a crowded aisle and approached him,” she continues.” I said to him, 'I think you have something of mine. I'm going to give you a choice. You can either give my wallet back to me and I'll forgive you right now, and I even promise to take you to the front and pay for your groceries.”
The alternative? Jessica would report him to the police.
“He reached into his pocket, took out my wallet and gave it back to me,” she recalls, adding that the money in the wallet had not been touched.
Paragraph 1:
Jessica kept her promise.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2:
Jessica's story has spread quickly and people have different opinions about it.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1.讲座的时间、地点；
2.讲座的内容；
3.联系方式。
注意：
1.词数80左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3.邮件的开头和结尾已为你写好。
Dear Professor Li,
I am Li Hua, chair of the Students' Union of Changjun Middle School. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We are looking forward to your reply.
Yours,
Li Hua
10 . I start every summer with the best of intentions:to attack one big book from the past, a classic that I was supposed to have read when young and ambitious. Often the pairings of books and settings have been purely accidental: "Moby Dick" on a three-day cross-country train trip: “The Magic Mountain” in a New England beachside cottage with no locks on the doors, no telephones or televisions in the rooms, and little to do beyond row on the salt pond. Attempting "The Man Without Qualities" on a return to Hawaii, my native state, however, was less fruitful: I made it through one and a quarter volumes (册), then decided that I'd got the point and went swimming instead.
But this summer I find myself at a loss. I’m not quite interested in Balzac, say, or “Tristram Shandy.” There’s always War and Peace, which I've covered some distance several times, only to get bogged down in the "War" part, set it aside for a while, and realize that I have to start over from the beginning again, having forgotten everyone’s name and social rank. How appealing to simply fall back on a favorite-once more into “The Waves” or “Justine,” which feels almost like cheating, too exciting and too much fun to properly belong in serious literature.
And then there’s Stendhal’s “The Red and the Black,” which happens to be the name of my favorite cocktail (鸡尾酒) of the summer, created by Michael Cecconi at Savoy and BackForty. It is easy to drink, and knocking back three or four seems like such a delightful idea. Cecconi's theory: "I take whatever’s fresh at the green market and turn it into liquid." The result is a pure shot of afternoon in the park, making one feel cheerful and peaceful all at once, lying on uncut grass with eyes shut, sun beating through the lids...
1. What can we infer about the author from the first paragraph?| A．He has a cottage in New England. | B．He shows talents for literature. |
| C．He enjoys reading when traveling. | D．He admires a lot of great writers. |
| A．Get confused. | B．Be carried away. |
| C．Be interrupted. | D．Make no progress. |
| A．He finishes them quickly. | B．He should read something serious. |
| C．He barely understands them. | D．He has read them many times before. |
| A．The Books of Summer | B．My Summer Holidays |
| C．To Read or Not to Read | D．It’s Never Too Late to Read |
