1 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

I was invited to a cookout on an old friend’s farm in western Washington. I parked my car outside the farm and walked past a milking house which had apparently not been used in many years. A noise at a window caught my attention, so I entered it. It was a hummingbird (蜂鸟), desperately trying to escape. She was covered in spider-webs (蛛网) and was barely able to move her wings. She ceased her struggle the instant I picked her up.

With the bird in my cupped hand, I looked around to see how she had gotten in. The broken window glass was the likely answer. I stuffed a piece of cloth into the hole and took her outside, closing the door securely behind me.

When I opened my hand, the bird did not fly away; she sat looking at me with her bright eyes. I removed the sticky spider-webs that covered her head and wings. Still, she made no attempt to fly. Perhaps she had been struggling against the window too long and was too tired? Or too thirsty?

As I carried her up the blackberry-lined path toward my car where I kept a water bottle, she began to move. I stopped, and she soon took wing but did not immediately fly away.

Hovering (悬停), she approached within six inches of my face. For a very long moment, this tiny creature looked into my eyes, turning her head from side to side. Then she flew quickly out of sight.

During the cookout, I told my hosts about the hummingbird incident. They promised to fix the window. As I was departing, my friends walked me to my car. I was standing by the car when a hummingbird flew to the center of our group and began hovering. She turned from person to person until she came to me. She again looked directly into my eyes, then let out a squeaking call and was gone. For a moment, all were speechless. Then someone said, “She must have come to say goodbye.”

注意：
1. 续写词数应为 150 左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题纸的相应位置作答。

A few weeks later, I went to the farm again.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I was just about to leave when the hummingbird appeared.

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3 . In 1953, when visiting his daughter’s maths class, the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. Later, he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. Since then, education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop (炒作和失败), even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life.

Softwares to “personalize” learning can help hundreds of millions of children stuck in miserable classes—but only if edtech supporters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. Alternatives have so far failed to teach so many children as efficiently as the conventional model of schooling, where classrooms, hierarchical year-groups, standardized curriculums and fixed timetables are still the typical pattern for most of the world’s nearly 1.5 billion schoolchildren. Under this pattern, too many do not reach their potential. That condition remained almost unchanged over the past 15 years, though billions have been spent on IT in schools during that period.

What really matters then? The answer is how edtech is used. One way it can help is through tailor-made instruction. Reformers think edtech can put individual attention within reach of all pupils. The other way edtech can aid learning is by making schools more productive. In California schools, instead of textbooks, pupils have “playlists”, which they use to access online lessons and take tests. The software assesses children’s progress, lightening teachers’ marking load and allowing them to focus on other tasks. A study suggested that children in early adopters of this model score better in tests than their peers at other schools.

Such innovation is welcome. But making the best of edtech means getting several things right. First, “personalized learning” must follow the evidence on how children learn. It must not be an excuse to revive pseudoscientific ideas such as “learning styles”: the theory that each child has a particular way of taking in information. This theory gave rise to government-sponsored schemes like Brain Gym, which claimed that some pupils should stretch or bend while doing sums. A less consequential falsehood is that technology means children do not need to learn facts or learn from a teacher—instead they can just use Google. Some educationalists go further, arguing that facts get in the way of skills such as creativity. Actually, the opposite is true. According to studies, most effective ways of boosting learning nearly all relied on the craft of a teacher.

Second, edtech must narrow, rather than widen, inequalities in education. Here there are grounds for optimism. Some of the pioneering schools are private ones in Silicon Valley. But many more are run by charter-school groups teaching mostly poor pupils, where laggards (成绩落后者) make the most progress relative to their peers in normal classes. A similar pattern can be observed outside America.

Third, the potential for edtech will be realized only if teachers embrace it. They are right to ask for evidence that products work. But skepticism should not turn into irrational opposition. Given what edtech promises today, closed-mindedness has no place in the classroom.

1. According to the passage, education technology can ________.

A．decrease teachers’ working load

B．facilitate personalized learning

C．help standardize curriculums

D．be loved by schoolchildren

2. Which example best argues against the underlined sentence in Para. 4?

A．The students who are better at memorization tend to be less creative.

B．Schools with bans on phones have better results than high-tech ones.

C．Shakespeare was trained in grammar but he penned many great plays.

D．Lu Xun’s creativity was unlocked after he gave up studying medicine.

3. The author believes that edtech functions well only when it is ________.

A．at the service of teaching

B．limited in use among pupils

C．aimed at narrowing the wealth gap

D．in line with students’ learning styles

4. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To stress the importance of edtech.

B．To introduce the application of edtech.

C．To discuss how to get the best out of edtech.

D．To appeal for more open-mindedness to edtech.

4 . What is volunteer travel?

Volunteer travel involves taking a trip where all or part of the purpose of the trip is to participate in an arranged service opportunity helping others. Typically, the volunteer activity takes place in a foreign country, but some opportunities can involve national or regional projects.     1    

Charitable interests often go far beyond national boundaries. People in developed countries become interested in the struggles of people in less developed countries.     2     Volunteer travel is a way to combine a visit to a new location with meaningful work that has a direct impact on communities in other parts of the world.

    3     Historically, church groups made up a large part of this market. Once a year a religious organization or church would organize a trip to another country.     4     For example, it would be to help build a school in an impoverished(贫困的)area, or dig wells so a village would have clean water, or engage in hundreds of other projects that would impact those less fortunate. As international travel became easier and the Internet made communication between countries much easier, the interest in volunteer travel increased.

    5     Volunteering in other countries has become as accessible as browsing a website and signing up. Instead of traveling with a group that is organized at the volunteers home base, the volunteer may join a group that gathers at the worksite from all over the world. This sort of volunteer travel is sometimes referred to as voluntourism or vacanteerism.

A．The primary purpose of the trip was very specific.

B．This type of travel has been an option for many years.

C．Educational institutions also made volunteer travel an option.

D．Sometimes, donating money is not enough to satisfy the need to help.

E．The Internet has helped make community service in general more popular.

F．These trips are usually arranged by church organizations, human interest groups or non-profits.

G．A new trend is that for-profit tour operators arrange group travel around volunteer opportunities.

5 . Armed with a toolkit of techniques and tricks to calm the mind and bring focus back to your body, you can stop stressful situations from sabotaging your day, says Katy Georgiou.

GROUND YOURSELF

Making contact with the ground is your baseline go-to response for stress. This technique can be especially helpful if you find your stress regularly turns into panic. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, place your feet flat on the ground so that you feel stable, and then close your eyes. If you’re able to sit on the floor cross-legged or to lie down flat, then even better.

Think of this as earthing: really connect with the ground beneath your body. Some studies suggest that this simple act can help reduce or relieve symptoms of stress such as pain and fatigue, reduce blood pressure, and improve sleep. If you’re feeling disconnected from the world, it can also remind you that you belong to it and are a crucial part of it — the ground will always be there for you.

LOVE THYSELF

Adopting regular, daily or weekly routines for self-care can be very containing, creating consistency amid all sorts of stressful life events happening around you. Looking in the mirror each day can actually remind you that you exist, so feel free to factor some reflective gazing into your daily routine, whether it’s while applying moisturiser, shaving, or brushing your hair. Studies have shown that being confronted with your reflection can have powerful effects, taking us out of our heads and into the immediate present. For added effect, pay attention to the way your products interact with your hair and skin as you apply them.

Playing around with smells, colours and textures in your hands will also engage your senses. Using a scented shampoo or smoothing on body lotion after a warm bath can be easy ways to do this.

CLEAR YOUR MIND

Abandon all your thoughts and try to focus only on your surroundings. What can you see, hear, smell, taste and touch? Identify three things you can hear, one thing you can taste, four things you can see and two things you can feel on your skin. Pick out colours in the room you are sitting in, notice textures and different kinds of light. If somebody is with you, tell them what you are experiencing. The point here is that your senses are your best and easiest route back to feeling calm, by coming out of your head and rooting yourself back in the present. This is incredibly helpful if you’re having a panic attack or flop response.

1. If your friend Jane always feels worn out and suffers from sleep deprivation, which of the following techniques will you especially recommend to her?

A．Connect her body to the ground beneath her.

B．Adopt a daily gaze at her reflection in the mirror.

C．Exchange her scentless shampoo for an aromatic one.

D．Focus on what she can see, hear, smell, taste and touch.

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

A．Lying down flat can better relieve your stress.

B．Grounding yourself can give you a sense of belonging to the world.

C．Brushing your hair while looking in the mirror can remind you of your existence.

D．Those having a panic attack should shut their senses down.

3. The passage is intended to __________.

A．help people understand themselves better

B．introduce some practical methods for stress management

C．emphasize the significance of exploiting multiple senses

D．promote a mindset of living in the moment

7 . How Did You Get Five Fingers?

Your arms and toes began as tiny buds that sprouted from your sides when you were just a four-week-old embryo (胚胎). By six weeks, these limb buds had grown longer and five rods of cartilage 软骨) had appeared in their flattened tips. By week seven, the cells between the rods had died away, forming five small fingers or toes from once-solid masses of flesh.

Now, a team of scientists led by James Sharpe from the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona has discovered that these events are carefully orchestrated by three molecules. They mark out zones in the embryonic hand where fingers will grow, and the spaces in between that are destined to die. Without such molecules, pianos and keyboards wouldn’t exist, and jazz hands would be jazz palms.

These three molecules work in a way first envisioned by Alan Turing, a legendary English mathematician and code-breaker. Back in 1952, Turing proposed a simple mathematical model in which two molecules could create patterns by spreading through tissues and interacting with each other. For example, the first molecule might activate the second, while the second blocks the first. Neither receives any guidance about where to go; through their dance, they spontaneously organize themselves into spots or stripes.

Since then, many scientists have found that these Turing mechanisms exist. They’re responsible for a cheetah’s spots and a zebrafish’s stripes. For 30 years, people have also suggested that they could sculpt our hands and feet, but no one had found the exact molecules involved.

Sharpe knew that these molecules would need to show a striped pattern. Sox9 seemed like the most promising candidate. It is activated in a striped pattern from a very early stage of development. By comparing cells where Sox9 is active or inactive, Jelena Raspopovic and Luciano Marcon found two other groups of genes—Bmp and Wnt—also formed striped patterns. Bmp rises and falls in step with Sox9 and both are active in the digits. Wnt is out of phase; it’s active in the gaps. The three molecules also affect each other: Bmp activates Sox9 while Wnt blocks it; and Sox9 blocks both of its partners. It looked like these were the molecules the team was searching for not a pair, as Turing suggested, but a trinity. To confirm this, they created a simulation of a growing limb bud and showed that Sox9, Bmp and Wnt could organize themselves into a pattern of five stripes, by activating and blocking each other.

There’s still a lot to discover, though. For example, I’ve used Bmp and Wnt as shorthands here—in reality, each represents a class of several molecules, and the team still needs to work out which specific member is part of the Turing’s proposal.

1. The underlined sentence in the second paragraph means that ________.

A．some certain molecules are necessary for the growth of human fingers

B．the development of embryos is dependent on some certain molecules

C．without some certain molecules, music won’t exist in this world

D．the molecules work in a way that Alan Turing once offered

2. What can we learn from the example given in the third paragraph?

A．Molecules interact by following a strict mathematical model.

B．Molecules have a strong will to form patterns in nature.

C．The formation of patterns in nature may be dominated by molecules.

D．Alan Turing was able to track down the movement of molecules.

3. What is “Sox9” according to the passage?

A．A protein that determines humans’ development in childhood.

B．A gene especially important for the development of our limbs.

C．A striped pattern that always interacts with Bmp and Wnt.

D．A simulation of growing limbs that activate and block each other.

4. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A．How human limbs are developed may well be similar to how animal spots are shaped.

B．The way Sox9 interacts with Bmp and Wnt is still a mystery that needs further studying.

C．Sox9 can activate both Bmp and Wnt to form our limbs, according to scientific research.

D．Sox9, Bmp and Wnt are three specific molecules that determine the growth of fingers.

9 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

“Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…”

Danny sang while his fingers pressed and pulled skillfully at the guitar strings, delivering a slow and peaceful tune. A circle of audience had formed, nodding and moving slowly to the song.

Lying at the feet of the street performer was his most adoring fan: One-Eyed, a white stray (流浪) dog with pieces of brown. Danny felt the name was suitable considering its physical disability. Usually, One-Eyed would bark loudly as Danny performed. Much to his annoyance, people often mistook the pair as owner and pet. At this time, Danny would reply, “My dog? No!”, eyes rolling at the idea. How he wished the dog would leave him alone instead!

On a snowy night, while Danny was performing, a bird flew downward, landing into the midst of the crowd. It cooed happily as if to harmonize with Danny. Unfortunately, that did not sit well with One-Eyed, which immediately bounced at it and the bird flew away desperately.

The unexpected chaos upturned Danny's hat, which could have been filled with notes and coins from his appreciative audience, leaving it ignored on the ground. "Argh! The hateful dog!” Danny broke down, thinking to himself, “Either the dog goes or I go!”

On the next night, Danny tried to find a new place and chanced upon the park. For a while his earnings were good unsurprisingly as there was a steady flow of visitors. However, that didn't last long. One-Eyed came along and appointed itself as Danny's guardian. "Argh! Here comes the hateful dog again!" That night, Danny hadn't made enough money he should have, all thanks to the troublesome dog.

Danny was almost mad with One-Eyed. “What should I do? Call an animal shelter?” Torn by this problem, he walked aimlessly by the lake of the park. With all his mind focused on how to get rid of the dog, Danny didn't watch his steps. Suddenly, he slipped and fell into the lake accidentally. Struggling in the icy water, he cried for help desperately, almost choking to death. Sensing the approach of death, Danny got into overwhelming panic.

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 then, a familiar barking was heard in the distance.

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“My hero! Thank you for saving me,” Danny said gratefully with watery eyes.

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10 . Group-Centered Societies Have Just as Much Creativity

What does culture have to do with creativity? The answer could be “a lot”. For decades, psychologists trying to understand the roots of creative imaginations have looked at the ways in which two different types of cultures can come to have an effect over its artistic and _________ output. Individualistic cultures encourage people to be unique and to _________ their own interests even if doing so comes at a cost to the group overall. Collectivistic cultures are based on relationships and duties to other people. These types of cultures often _________ the individual’s wants for the needs of those who are close to them or for those in their community.

Individualism has long been thought to have a creative _________. Individualists _________ social convention, the logic goes, and that pushback supports innovation. For instance, around the world, individualistic cultures have more patents than collectivistic cultures do. _________, a new study suggests that these ideas about culture and creativity could be off base. People in collectivistic cultures actually do better with a particular type of creative thinking than those in individualistic cultures. And the findings overall reveal the shortcomings of thinking about innovation too _________.

The new work comes from comparing communities in different parts of China. Though it scores high, as a nation, on measures of cultural _________, China’s 1.4 billion people are more than just a single culture. People from areas north of the Yangtze River tend to be more _________, open to strangers and self-confident, whereas people along the river and farther south are often more inter-dependent, partial to friends over strangers and likely to try harder to __________.

In the new creativity study, researchers investigated innovation with these two groups in mind. The team used a drawing test that had been created by psychologists. They gave kids a sheet of paper with just a few basic elements printed on it: some dots here, squiggles (弯曲的线条) there, and a rectangle that suggested a drawing frame. The children got 15 minutes to use the elements already on the page to draw whatever they wanted. They could get “adaptive creativity” points for doodling in ways that connected the squiggles and lines into an original and __________ image. In addition, a judge checked whether the children chose to incorporate a small shape that could be found just outside the rectangular. This element was easy to __________, so those who included this outside-the-box detail could get points for “boundary-breaking creativity.”

The researchers gave the test to 683 middle school students from north and south of the Yangtze River. When the scientists got the scores back, they discovered that there were no differences in the children’s overall creativity. When they broke down the results into components, they found that students from collectivistic regions scored __________ in adaptive creativity while those from individualistic areas did better in boundary-breaking creativity.

The findings are also a warning against cultural chauvinism (极端民族主义). Western countries have tended to lead the way in innovation — at least as defined by the metrics (指标) we Westerners have created. Perhaps we have been __________ China’s adaptive creativity. For example, while the country may not have invented the assembly line, it is largely thanks to the __________ its people have made to this system that the country has such a thriving manufacturing sector today.

1.

A．theoretical

B．inventive

C．productive

D．regular

2.

A．prioritize

B．deprive

C．tolerate

D．abandon

3.

A．satisfy

B．stimulate

C．cherish

D．sacrifice

4.

A．shelter

B．edge

C．border

D．alternative

5.

A．embrace

B．propose

C．resist

D．create

6.

A．However

B．Therefore

C．Meanwhile

D．Moreover

7.

A．broadly

B．objectively

C．seriously

D．narrowly

8.

A．individualism

B．identity

C．collectivism

D．flexibility

9.

A．selfish

B．collective

C．individualistic

D．realistic

10.

A．fall apart

B．fit in

C．give in

D．show off

11.

A．separate

B．ugly

C．unified

D．tiny

12.

A．catch

B．miss

C．target

D．misuse

13.

A．higher

B．averagely

C．lower

D．vaguely

14.

A．capturing

B．approaching

C．imitating

D．overlooking

15.

A．improvements

B．drawbacks

C．insights

D．attempts