1 . On November 8th, a tornado, the most powerful in the past 70 years, hit Jersey, causing great damages to the area and leaving the residents in great panic.

“Suddenly, the windows of the waiting room exploded in and dragged everything inside. My cars have been completely destroyed by branches and fences, and my garden is completely gone. There’s no furniture, no fence; everything has been thrown everywhere. At first there was lightning but then a strange noise and strange darkness came over the whole house. It was like being in a scary scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz,” Ashleigh Quail-Charleston, a Jersey resident, told the Bailiwick Express after the tornado that struck overnight on November 1—2 during Storm Ciaran.

The consequence looked like a bomb had gone off: cars hit, roofs with holes, windows broken. “A huge tree leans drunkenly against a block of flats. Piles of branches are piled optionally and pavements are covered with pieces,” said Chris Stone at BBC Radio Jersey. The tornado was powerful and exceptionally rare, caused by a severe thunderstorm that had sent out intense lightning and huge hailstones described as “ice bombs”. The Tornado and Storm Research Organization (Torro) and Jersey Met Office revealed the tornado left a trail of damages 8 km long across the island, and rated its intensity as T6 on an international scale of tornado power.

According to Torro records, this was the most powerful tornado to strike anywhere in the British Isles or Channel Islands since December 7th, 1954 when a tornado struck west London, leaving tremendous devastation, with Gunnersbury railway station torn apart, roofs torn off houses and one car even thrown through the air.

Tornados during Storm Ciaran also hit Sompting in West Sussex and Loders in Dorset. One resident in Loders, Sophie van Hensbergen, described the moment, saying, “The tornado struck with a very, very powerful whistling sound and the windows looked as though we were in a car wash.”

1. Why is The Wizard of Oz mentioned in paragraph 2?

A．To summarize the consequence.	B．To introduce the topic.
C．To enrich the readers’ knowledge.	D．To help describe the tornado.

2. What does paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．How tornado was rated.

B．What caused the tornado.

C．How severe the tornado was.

D．What should be done to prevent the tornado.

3. What does the underlined word “devastation” mean in paragraph 4?

A．Marks.

B．Damages.

C．Memory.

D．Impression.

4. What is this text?

A．A news item.	B．A science report.
C．A movie reviewer.	D．A weather forcast.

2 . NY Giants game-by-game predictions for the 2023 NFL season

Week 1:vs Cowboys

Sunday, Sept.10, 8:20 p.m.

At some point, the Giants are going to have to break through and prove they can play at the level of Dallas and Philadelphia in the NFC East. Dak Prescott has had their number for awhile now, too. But let’s just say Big Blue rides the momentum of being at home in the opener.

Prediction: Win

Week 2:at Cardinals

Sunday, Sept.17, 8:05 p.m.

It’s unlikely that Kyler Murray is on the field to face the Giants this early in his ACL recovery. That’s a positive for the defense, and I can see the Cardinals being out manned here as Daniel Jones tests this defense being put together by new head coach Jonathan Gannon.

Prediction: Win

Week 3:at 49ers

Thursday, Sept.21, 8:15 p.m.

This is a tough spot, even if the Giants stay out west and practice in Phoenix in order to cut down on the short-week travel to California for this one. The 49ers are loaded defensively and Christian Mc Caffrey is going to test the Giants’ rebuilt run defense, putting pressure on the revamped middle featuring Bobby Okereke. It’s uncertain which quarterback will be available for San Francisco, and it could be Sam Darnold.

Prediction: Loss

Week 4:vs Seahawks

Monday, Oct.2, 8:20 p.m.

The Giants return home to Met Life for “Monday Night Football” against Geno Smith and his team the Seahawks, who beat Big Blue in their building last year. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the Giants return the favor.

Prediction: Win
1. Which event may see the Giants’ failure?

A．Week 1:vs Cowboys	B．Week 2:at Cardinals
C．Week 3:at 49ers	D．Week 4:vs Seahawks

2. What is Geno Smith?

A．A player in the Giants.	B．A coach in Cowboys.
C．Manager of Big Blue.	D．An athlete in the Seahawks.

3. The events mentioned above will be held       .

A．in the evening.

B．in September.

C．in the same place.

D．by different hosts.

3 . Depending on your job, you may have the chance to make a kid’s day while at work. Or even better, you may have memories of an adult going the extra mile just to make you smile. For a group of construction workers, the opportunity popped up in the form of a toy truck. Excited to see some building work being done in the area, a small boy paid a visit with his tiny truck as if to join the action. What happened next is something that the little one will surely value forever.

The heart-warming moment was shot in a video that has since gone viral. Wanting to be a part of it all and hoping to see the big excavator at work, the kid placed his wheeled toy under the big metal machine. The machine operator, moved by it all, was grateful and filled the toy truck with earth. With careful precision, as if it were a crucial part of the construction work being done, he made the little boy’s dreams come true. While it’s hard to find the location or the time from the video alone, the excitement of the kid as the machine slowly fills the mini dump truck is universally lovely. Even the other construction workers stop for a while to witness the cute scene. All the while, the kid’s mom holds him firmly to keep everyone safe until the toy truck is full and the machine is still.

While anyone can appreciate the sweetness of a group of adults taking a few minutes to put a smile on a child’s face, the video has had all kinds of positive responses. For some, it brought back memories of seeing construction work and big machines when they were little and being blown away. For others, it allowed them to enjoy the unexpected delicacy of the great machine. If there’s one thing we all can agree on, it’s that the boy wasn’t the only one who benefited from this tiny action. As one editor wrote, “I used to work in the field. I can tell you it made everyone’s day.”

1. Why did the kid come to the construction field?

A．To drive the big excavator alone.	B．To work like a construction worker.
C．To get some earth from the field.	D．To see what the construction site is like.

2. What did the excavator operator do?

A．He held the kid firmly to keep him safe.	B．He stopped for a while to witness the scene.
C．He filled the kid’s toy truck with earth.	D．He got off the machine and picked the kid up.

3. What do we know from the last paragraph?

A．The video was a great hit.	B．Many adults recalled their bad childhood.
C．Only the kid was the winner of the video.	D．People thought the video funny.

4. Which of the following best describes the excavator operator’s deed?

A．Curious.

B．Amusing.

C．Ambitious.

D．Considerate

4 . Having an off day when you feel stressed or sad is totally normal.    1    We’ve put together some different things you can try to help turn your mood around and get feeling like yourself again.

Take a few minutes to breathe deeply. The simple action of taking full, deep breaths can help you start to feel better. Deep breathing increases oxygen supply throughout the body.     2     Deep breathing also helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which produces a calming effect.

Start keeping diaries.    3    It is a way to cognitively deal with the circumstances behind how you are feeling. In fact, studies have shown that writing offers benefits of emotional well-being, including relief of emotional distress. Besides, adjourning has been shown to benefit the immune system.

    4    Emotional tears signal the body to let out endorphins or “feel-good” hormones to promote a feeling of calm and well-being. Not only does crying allow your body to let out stress hormones, but at the end of a good cry, the body assumes a calmer state with a lower heart and breathing rate.

Rely on your support system. Studies have shown the benefits of having a close support system of family and friends to whom you can turn. Social support leads to a sense of belonging and security rather than loneliness while dealing with emotional pain.    5    

A．Take a break to laugh.

B．Go ahead and cry if you need to.

C．Take some time for yourself and treat yourself.

D．It’s also been linked to an increased sense of self-worth.

E．Writing down your feelings provides a great benefit.

F．This can help to relax muscles and reduce your blood pressure.

G．The good news is that there are things you can do for yourself to start feeling better.

5 . The universal speed limit of any kind of wave — whether electromagnetic or gravitational travelling through a vacuum has been known since Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905. But the maximum speed of sound moving through a solid or a liquid has just been calculated for the first time. It is about 36 kilometre per second, more than 8,000 times lower than the speed of light in a vacuum.

To make this calculation, Kostya Trachenko at Queen Mary University of London and his colleagues started with two well-known physical constants: the ratio of proton mass to electron mass, and the fine structure constant, which characteristics the strength of interactions between charged particles.

Trachenko says we have a pretty good idea of these values, because if they were changed even a bit, the universe wouldn’t look at all like it does.” If you change these constants by a few percent, then the proton might not be stable anymore, and you might not even have the processes in stars resulting in the combination of heavy elements, so there would be no carbon, no life,” he says.

Sound is a wave that spreads by making neighbouring particles interact with one another, so its speed depends on the density of a material and how the atoms within it are bound together. Atoms can only move so quickly, and the speed of sound is limited by that movement.

“The common wisdom was that diamond has the highest speed of sound, because it is the hardest material, but we didn’t know whether there was a theoretical fundamental limit to it,” says Trachenko. The theoretical bound is about twice the speed of sound in a diamond.

The speed of sound is also dependent on the mass of the atoms in the material, so there searchers predicted that solid metallic hydrogen — a material that theoretically exists at the centre of giant planets, but for which laboratory evidence has been hotly questioned — should have the highest speed of sound. They calculated that it should be close to the theoretical limit. They also looked at experimental data for 133 materials and found that none of them broke the limit.

1. How did people find out the speed of waves?

A．By measuring the speed of sounds.

B．By using modern technology and science.

C．By depending on a great scientist’s theory.

D．By comparing the theories about the universe.

2. What does the underlined word “they” in paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Interactions.

B．Particles.

C．Values.

D．Constants.

3. What do Trachenko’s words indicate?

A．Diamond has surely the highest speed of sound.

B．He believes in a theoretical fundamental limit.

C．Solid and liquid materials have the same speed limits.

D．Diamond has yet to be proven the hardest material.

4. What conclusion can we get if there is solid metallic hydrogen?

A．It has a close theoretical fundamental limit of speed.

B．There would be no carbon,no life in the universe.

C．Some materials broke theoretical fundamental limit.

D．It will surely travel to other sections of the universe.

6 . 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。

On a Saturday afternoon, my friend’s eleven-year-old daughter Jenny and I wound our way through the crowd at the State Fair of Texas. Her dad, along with my husband, followed behind. Seconds later, we arrived at the section of the fair that I dreaded（畏惧）more than searching for a place to park: the midway rides. As the loudspeakers shouted “I Will Survive”, potential victims passed us like a tornado.

Jenny looked up at the windsurf ride with her eyes wide open. I was confident that she, like my children when they were her age, would bypass the twisting, terrifying, multi-story mechanical arms and continue walking elsewhere.

I was wrong.

“Will you go on this ride with me?” she asked.

“Um, sure,” I answered while glancing up at the people who were suspended upside down.

“How bad could it be?” I asked.

“Not bad if rides don’t make you sick,” Jenny said.

I could have made up an excuse for not to risk my life. Or I could have admitted my possibility of motion sickness. But, earlier that morning, I had challenged myself to try something new each week. I was ready to push myself out of my comfort zone. Jenny stared at the ride, eager to experience the same thrill as the brave group of riders in front of us, I couldn’t say no.

We bought two tickets. After climbing into our seats, an attendant reached up, pulled down the bar, and locked it in place. The ride lifted us slowly and then turned us over like the blueberry pancakes. Staring at the ground directly below us, I wondered why I had decided to wear flip-flops（人字拖）. I wondered when my new health insurance would kick in. My stomach upset. The ride touched down finally. Her dad and my husband were waiting for us at the exit. “How was it?” they asked.

“Fine. No big deal,” I said, even though my head was dizzy. Jenny walked ahead of us and convinced me to keep taking chances and sample more rides.

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。

“Oh, look at the pirate ship!” she said.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the way to the car, I sent my son a video of me on the first ride filmed by my husband.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7 . Steller or Northern Sea Lions are sometimes confused with California Sea Lions but are much larger and lighter in color. Males may grow to 11 feet in length and weigh almost 2,500 pounds.     1     Steller Sea Lions are light brown to reddish-brown in color. They have a boxy, bear-like head and a very thick neck.

Stellers are not often seen in bays or rivers. Steller pups are born on offshore islands from mid-May to mid-July and weigh 35—50 pounds.     2     Then they spend roughly equal amounts of time hunting and nursing pups on land. Pups usually nurse for a year, but some in Alaska continue to nurse for up to three years. During the breeding season, males do not leave their territories.

    3     They hunt schooling fish, squid, rockfish, and occasionally salmon. In turn, they are hunted by killer whales, white sharks, and sea elephants.

The current population of Steller Sea Lions is about 40,000 along the entire Pacific coast. There is great concern about this species. The western Aleutian stock has dropped by 80 percent in the last 30 years. In 1997, the western stock in Alaska was listed as endangered.     4     However, researchers believe possibilities include a decline in specific species of fish they eat, competition with commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska, and possible hunting by killer whales. Drowning, being caught in nets, and gunshots are other reasons for the Stellers’ decline. Stellers are protected under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.     5    

A．Steller Sea Lions eat a variety of fishes.

B．Reasons for this decline are not known.

C．The male has a thick neck and looks like a lion.

D．They spend about half their time on land and half in water.

E．Mothers stay with pups for one to two weeks before hunting at sea.

F．They forbid the killing, harming or disturbance of any sea mammal.

G．Females are much smaller, growing to 9 feet in length and weighing up to 1,000 pounds.

8 . Harvest Days

Event Details

Harvest Days has returned bigger and better than ever. This family-fun event falls on 7th & 8th, October from 10:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m. on Saturday and 11:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m. on Sunday. This year’s event includes a two-day silent auction (拍卖), staged in the Firehouse. Bid (投标) on a variety of heritage pieces inspired by objects preserved in the museum’s collection. Also, up for bid are a variety of museum passes, experiences, art, wine, beer, and more. All the money will benefit the museum through the work of the Landis Valley Associates.

Tickets will be available at the front gate.

Used to celebrate the harvest of a year’s hard work, Harvest Days is Landis Valley’s oldest and largest family event. Come for demonstrations, exhibits, live music, and children’s activities. Taste varieties of apples and watch them become apple butter and drink. Witness wool go from sheep to clothes. Pick a pumpkin of your very own and then decorate it. All of these and more are packed into two fun-filled days.

This year’s event offers food demonstrations, such as apple butter, processing pork, bake oven and heart h cooking; craft demonstrations, such as coopering, blacksmith, leather, brooms, millinery, weaving, woodwork; craft sales, such as jams & jellies, potteries, soap, candles.

Food will be available for purchase on site. Free parking.

LOCATION: Landis Valley Village & Far m Museum

ADDRESS: 2451 Kissel Hill Road, Lancaster, PA 17601

CONTACT: 717-569-0401

1. Where will the money from the auction finally go?

A．To the bidders.	B．To the museum.
C．To the government.	D．To the villagers.

2. What is Harvest Days intended for?

A．Adventure and exploration.

B．Celebration and education.

C．Presentation and advertising.

D．Entertainment and exchange.

3. What do we know about this year’s Harvest Days?

A．There is no charge of parking.

B．Apple juice is served for participants.

C．It will be held on an open farm in Landies Valley.

D．Collection’s of Landis Valley Associates are for sale.

9 . Two new residents in Aarwangen, a small village in Swiss, filed complaints with the village council about the constant ringing of cowbells. They asked for the cows’ bells to be _________ at night so they could sleep.

Long-term residents, and the village’s remaining farmers were _________. They thought it was a(n) _________ on their traditional culture. “We want to _________ and maintain our lived traditions in the future,” they say.

Cowbells have been used in rural Switzerland for centuries. They were once useful for _________ cows on the hill side in summer. Farmers say they can _________ each individual cow by the sound of its own bell. _________, in modern times, many farmers have switched to using electronic chips _________ bells.

Over the past few decades, many new _________ have arrived here from large cities. They are less __________ to the agricultural way of life.

This year’s battle is not the first time residents have __________ cowbells. In 2015, a Zurich appeals court __________ a farmer to remove the bells from his 27 cows from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., since they were safe in a small farm and keeping the neighbors __________.

Next month, Aarwangen’s villagers will gather for a public meeting to vote on the __________ of their bells. They will decide how the sound of the bells can __________ without breaking noise pollution laws.

1.

A．marked

B．watched

C．fastened

D．removed

2.

A．angry

B．proud

C．frightened

D．excited

3.

A．effect

B．comment

C．attack

D．reliance

4.

A．study

B．preserve

C．record

D．restore

5.

A．counting

B．tracking

C．entertaining

D．feeding

6.

A．catch

B．contact

C．spot

D．hear

7.

A．Besides

B．Therefore

C．However

D．Meanwhile

8.

A．instead of

B．thanks to

C．regardless of

D．according to

9.

A．residents

B．researchers

C．tourists

D．pioneers

10.

A．attracted

B．accustomed

C．opposed

D．devoted

11.

A．thought over

B．gave up

C．put on

D．complained about

12.

A．hoped

B．promised

C．ordered

D．refused

13.

A．alive

B．asleep

C．ashamed

D．awake

14.

A．future

B．number

C．tone

D．design

15.

A．rise

B．continue

C．spread

D．return

10 . Time is running short to address climate change, but there are possible and effective solutions on the table, according to a new UN climate report released in March.

Only swift, dramatic, and sustained emission (排放) cuts will be enough to meet the world’s climate goals, according to the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of climate experts that regularly summarize the state of this issue.

“We are walking when we should be running fast,” said Hoesung Lee, IPCC chair, in a press conference announcing the report in March. To limit warming to 1.5℃ above preindustrial levels, the target set by international climate agreements, annual greenhouse-gas emission will need to be cut by nearly half between now and 2030, according to the report. It calculates that the results from actions taken now will be clear in global temperature trends within two decades.

“We already have the technology and the know-how to get the job done,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UN Environment Programme, during the press conference. “Stopping climate change will still be complicated, and long-term emission cuts may largely rely on technologies, like carbon dioxide removal, that are still unproven at scale. In addition to technological advances, cutting emission in industries that are difficult to transform will involve many factors.”

But in the near term, there’s a clear path forward for the emission cuts needed to put the planet on the right track. There are some of the tasks with the lowest cost and highest potential to address climate change during this decade, such as developing wind and solar power, cutting methane (甲烷) emission from fossil-fuel production and waste, protecting natural ecosystems that trap carbon, and using energy efficiently in vehicles, homes, and industries.

1. What is the author’s attitude towards tackling climate change?

A．Positive.

B．Worried.

C．Skeptical.

D．Uncertain.

2. What does Hoesung Lee mean?

A．It’s impossible to achieve the climate goal.

B．He knows how to cut emission efficiently.

C．The pace of global warming is speeding up.

D．He is dissatisfied with current emission cuts.

3. What is the guarantee of long-term emission reduction according to Inger Andersen?

A．Policy.

B．Market.

C．Funding.

D．Technology.

4. What message does this text mainly convey?

A．Emission cutting is urgent.

B．Climate change is unstoppable.

C．Global warming is becoming complicated.

D．Meeting climate goals needs cooperation.