1 . How to Make Friends

Friendship is a very important human relationship and everyone needs good friends. Good friendship has many benefits. It offers companionship, improves self-worth and promotes good health. There are times in our lives such as when we have recently moved into a new town, or changed our jobs or schools. Such changes often leave us without a friend.     1     But for many of us the process is difficult and requires courage. Below are some helpful suggestions on how to make and keep friends.

1. Associate with others.

The first step to making friends is associating with other people. You can go to public places to meet new people. Besides, you will need to make yourself known by becoming an active member of such places.

2. Start a conversation.

Starting a conversation is the second most important step in making new friends.     2     You can always start the conversation. Being able to make small talk is a very useful skill in relating with other people.

3.     3    

Choosing friends with common interests is important in building friendship as these interests would always bring you and your friend together. Hanging out will always be a pleasant experience.

4. Let it grow.

It is a good thing to stay in touch. However, try not to press your new friend with calls, messages or visits as this would likely wear him or her out and finally you may lose your friend.     4     The best friendships are the ones that grow naturally.

5. Enjoy your friendship.

The best way to enjoy your friendship is to allow your friends to be themselves.     5     Try not to change them from who they are to what you want them to be. Become the kind of friend you will want your friend to be to you.

A．Be cheerful.

B．Do things together.

C．Do not wait to be spoken to.

D．Try not to find fault with your friends.

E．Making new friends comes easy for some people.

F．For a friendship to develop you need to stay in touch.

G．So you will need to give your friend time to react to you.

2 . It is said that a person’s high school years are some of the most important they will experience，and are often seen as a critical and life­shaping time.I coudn’t agree more.

My high school life has been filled with many ups and downs, whether it was social or academic.Even though my current high school was not my first choice, I never regretted attending Southside High School.“Since you have chosen it, then it is the best for you，” said my parents.

Up until the junior year I did not realize my capabilities (能力) as a student.Being in the IB Program, I was told that my junior year would be the toughest in all the years of high school.With this “little” piece of information, I walked into my junior year, scared of my grades.As weeks went by, I started to believe that the junior year was not as hard as everyone had said, but I was wrong.My grades were rapidly declining (下降) and by the end of the first term I had had five Cs in seven of my classes! I could not believe it — I did not want to believe it.I tried my best to get my grades up myself without any help from anyone, but my pride just made my grades worse.And I had to miss out on one of the most important speech and debate competitions all year：States.I was heartbroken.I realized that I could not survive my junior year on my own, so I had to get help fast.

Once I got a tutor, my grades went from Cs, Ds, and even some Fs, to nothing but As and Bs.I slowly started to gain my confidence back in all of my classes and even myself.By the time the third and fourth quarter came around, I had been on the honor roll twice, and I was receiving awards from speeches and debates, tennis and school.

Southside has taught me to always keep my head up and never give up on myself no matter what life throws at me.I am proud to be a Southside Tiger.

1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?

A．The writer always thought Southside High School was the best.

B．The writer’s parents persuaded her into attending Southside High School.

C．The writer has met many challenges since she attended high school.

D．Life has become easier since the writer came to Southside High School.

2. How did the writer feel when she walked into her junior year?

A．Excited.	B．Worried.
C．Curious.	D．Uninterested.

3. Why was the writer’s study worse and worse?

A．Because she didn’t work hard enough.

B．Because she didn’t ask others for help because of pride.

C．Because she missed many important speeches.

D．Because no one would like to help her.

4. What important lesson has the writer learned at Southside High School?

A．Students should face challenges bravely.

B．Students should be careful in choosing school.

C．Students should be proud of their school.

D．Students should better learn about life.

3 . Is there a link between social media and depression? Do Facebook and Instagram have a negative impact on your mental health? It’s complicated.

Sometimes, looking through Instagram just makes you feel bad. You try not to envy your friends, but they always seem to be traveling somewhere cool, eating something fancy, or looking cute in perfect just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. On the other hand, there are times when you laugh at funny memes (表情包), catch up with old friends, and feel happy to belong to fun social media communities. Clearly, social media isn’t all bad.

People are increasingly suspecting that there’re potential problems of social media. Things like cyberbullying (网上欺凌) , screen addiction, and being exposed to endless filtered images (美颜) that make it impossible not to make comparisons between yourself and others often make the news. In July, a big study came out in the journal JAMA titled “Association of Screen Time and Depression in Adolescence.” This big headline seems to confirm what a lot of people have been saying — screen time is horrible for young people.

The study followed over 3,800 adolescents over four years as part of a drug and alcohol prevention program. Part of what the investigators measured was the teens’ amount of screen time, including time spent on social media, as well as their levels of depression symptoms. One of their main findings was that higher amounts of social media use were associated with higher levels of depression. That was true both when the researches compared between people and compared each person against their own mental health over time.

Case closed? Not so fast. Before we end the debate once and for all, let’s take a closer look at this and other studies. Let’s ask ourselves: what exactly is the relationship between social media use and depression? It turns out there are several warnings.

1. Why do people sometimes feel bad when looking through Instagram?

A．They lack contact with old friends.	B．They can travel nowhere.
C．They don’t look perfect.	D．They feel unbalanced.

2. Why is the article in journal JAMA mentioned?

A．To comment.

B．To prove.

C．To suggest.

D．To explore.

3. Which may agree with the findings of the study?

A．Depression is related to social media use.

B．Teens’ amount of screen time is limited.

C．It is not easy to tell reasons for depression.

D．Social media contributes to physical health.

4. What’s the best title of the text?

A．How to reduce depression?	B．Does social media cause depression?
C．Shall people reduce screen time?	D．Why is it time to give up social media?

4 . 假如你是李华，你的英国朋友Linda最近在中国学习。她在邮件中向你诉说了她的困扰：不适应新的学习环境，想家，感到焦虑。请你给她写一封邮件。内容包括：
1. 给予安慰；
2. 提出建议。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
参考词汇：homesick 想家的
Dear Linda,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours sincerely,

Li Hua

5 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

Reading a book can open the door to a wonderful new world of discovery and     1    (imagine), which is why people all around the world love to read. Every year many notable prizes     2    (award) to the creative minds behind the books we enjoy. One such prize goes to the best new work of children’s fiction.

Known as the Newbery Medal, the award got started back in 1921,     3     Frederic Melcher suggested the American Library Association set up an annual award     4     the best new children’s book. Everyone agreed, and they     5    (final) decided to name the award after John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher making great efforts     6    (promote) children’s literature. The winning book is chosen by a committee that     7    (vary) from year to year, and the process of     8    (choose) a winner takes an entire year. Sometimes,     9    committee will designate (指定) honor books, which are books that might not have won the award, but are still considered to be very     10    (impress). So next time you are at the bookstore, take a look at the children’s section.

6 . Once upon a time, my father and I got lost in a forest in France. I must have been about twelve or thirteen. Anyway, it was before the time when most people ________ a mobile phone. It was in the Loire Valley. About half an hour later, my dad ________ the truth. “Oh, it seems that we’re lost.” We walked around and around in circles, trying to find the path, ________ with no luck. I could tell my dad was starting to ________, even as he was trying to hide it from me. We had been in the forest for hours then and both knew my mom would be in a state of great ________. At school, I had just been told the story of the hikers who had died in the wild and I found it easy to ________ that would be our fate (命运) too. “If we keep going in a ________ line we’ll get out of here,” my dad said.

And he was right. ________ we heard the sound of cars and ________ a main road. We were eleven miles from the village where we had ________, but at least we had signposts (路标). And I often think of that strategy, when I am totally ________ — literally (字面上的) or metaphorically. I thought of it when I was faced with an unexpected ________, when my heart beat rapidly with ________ and didn’t know how I could make a living. Walking one foot in front of the other, in the same ________, will always get you further than running around in circles. It’s about the ________ to keep walking forward.

1.

A．owned

B．borrowed

C．invented

D．demanded

2.

A．repeated

B．realized

C．reminded

D．faced

3.

A．and

B．if

C．yet

D．so

4.

A．protest

B．erupt

C．suffer

D．panic

5.

A．worry

B．shock

C．disappointment

D．relief

6.

A．decide

B．announce

C．imagine

D．represent

7.

A．simple

B．short

C．straight

D．similar

8.

A．At times

B．At last

C．At least

D．At a loss

9.

A．chose

B．missed

C．followed

D．reached

10.

A．set off

B．passed by

C．cleaned up

D．given up

11.

A．lost

B．concerned

C．absorbed

D．stuck

12.

A．phenomenon

B．opportunity

C．performance

D．unemployment

13.

A．regret

B．surprise

C．fear

D．curiosity

14.

A．way

B．cycle

C．direction

D．distance

15.

A．position

B．determination

C．inspiration

D．tradition

7 . Doctors say anger can be an extremely damaging emotion. They warn that anger can lead to heart disease, stomach problems, headaches, emotional problems and possibly cancer.

    1     Some people express anger openly in a calm reasonable way. Some burst with anger, screaming and yelling, or even throwing and smashing things. But other people keep their anger inside. They can not or will not express it. This is called repressing anger.

For years many doctors thought that repressing anger was more dangerous to a person’s health than expressing it. They said that when a person is angry, the brain releases the same hormones(荷尔蒙). They speed the heart rate, raise blood pressure, or sugar into the blood, etc.     2     Containing this urge(冲动) for long may increase the risk of diseases and worsen the emotion.

Some doctors say that expressing anger can be dangerous as well. They believe that those who express anger violently may be more likely to develop heart disease, and that those who keep anger inside may face a greater danger of high blood pressure.

    3     The first step they advise is to admit that you are angry and to recognize the real cause of the anger, then decide if the cause is serious enough to get angry about. If it is, they say, “    4     Wait until your anger has cooled down and you are able to express yourself calmly and reasonably.”

And another good way to deal with anger, as doctors add, is to find humor in the situation that has made you angry.     5    

A．In general the person feels excited and ready to act.

B．After all, laughter is the most effective cure for bad emotions.

C．It’s not wise to express anger violently either.

D．They advise you to escape from the reality for a while.

E．Do not express your anger while angry.

F．People may cope with their anger in various ways.

G．Doctors say the solution is learning how to deal with anger.

8 . Even if you aren’t into artificial intelligence, it’s time to pay attention to ChatGPT, because this one is a big deal. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can accomplish.

ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models. It lets you type in natural-language prompts and then offers conversational replies. It remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It finds relevant information in its oceans of training data, and changes that into plausible-sounding(貌似有理的) paragraphs of text.

You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that’s useful. For example, you can ask it encyclopedia questions like, “Explain Newton’s laws(定律) of motion.” You can tell it, “Write me a poem.” and when it does, say, “Now make it more exciting.” You can ask it to write a computer program that’ll show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.

A few days after its launch, more than 1 million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.

Many people fear that ChatGPT might help students cheat better. But as with many other technology developments, it’s not a simple black-and-white situation. Decades ago, students could copy encyclopedia entries and use calculators, and more recently, they’ve been able to use search engines and Wikipedia. ChatGPT offers new abilities for everything from helping with research to doing your homework for you absolutely.

Dustin York, an associate professor of communication at Maryville University, hopes educators will learn to use ChatGPT as a tool and realize it can help students think critically.

“Educators thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the Internet itself would ruin education, but they did not.” York said, “what worries me most are educators who may actively try to discourage the acknowledgment of AI like ChatGPT. It is a tool, not a villain(恶棍).”

1. What is ChatGPT?

A．A search engine system.	B．A homework query system.
C．A navigation system.	D．An intelligent chat system.

2. Which function of ChatGPT is Not mentioned in this passage?

A．Chatting by voice.	B．Explaining the meaning of something.
C．Creative writing.	D．Computer programming.

3. What is the author’s attitude towards ChatGPT in this article?

A．Negative.	B．Objective.
C．Supportive.	D．Not mentioned in the article.

4. What is Not true about the content of this article?

A．ChatGPT can help students with their homework.

B．ChatGPT reduces students’ ability to think.

C．Some educators consider AI technology harmful to education.

D．You can get a useful answer to almost any question in ChatGPT.

9 . There has been a very serious decline(下降) in the numbers of shallow-water fish as a result of overfishing. People still want to eat fish, so the fishing industry must look at other sources, especially the deep waters of the Atlantic. This has resulted in a sharp decline in the numbers of many of the species caught.

Protective measures will have to be put into effect if these deep-sea fish are to survive. Research on five such species shows that numbers have reduced by between 87 percent and 98 percent. This puts them on the list of “extremely endangered”. Many species could well disappear completely if the present trend continues. These are species that have been swimming in our oceans for hundreds of millions of years.

The problem is stressed by the fact that the decline in numbers happened in less than twenty years. Deep-sea fish take a long time to reproduce and normally live for many years. Unfortunately, their reproduction rate is very low. The average size of such fish also declined, with one species showing a 57 percent decline in average size. This is of typical concern, as large fish tend to produce more descendants than small ones.

None of these facts has been taken into consideration by the fishing industry. The deep-sea species have been caught as if they were the fast-breeding(快速繁殖) fish like sardine and herring. It is like killing elephants as if they reproduced at the same rate as rabbits.

The damage done by overfishing goes beyond the sea environment. Millions of people make a living in the fishing industry. Billions of people rely on fish for protein. Measures must be taken to not only preserve ecosystems, but also sustain livelihoods and ensure food security.

1. Why did people start fishing for deep-sea fish?

A．Because deep sea fish tastes better.

B．Because there are not enough fish to eat in the shallow sea.

C．Because technological development makes it easier to catch deep-sea fish.

D．Because water pollution in shallow sea areas is serious.

2. According to paragraph 3, what serious results have been caused by the fishing of deep-sea fish?

A．There are deep-sea fish species that are completely extinct.

B．Deep-sea fish have lost their ability to reproduce.

C．Deep-sea fish reproduce more slowly.

D．The size of deep-sea fish has decreased.

3. What can be inferred from paragraph 4?

A．The fishing industry catches deep-sea fish in a ruinous way.

B．Elephants reproduce at the same rate as rabbits.

C．Sardine and herring are also endangered like deep-sea fish.

D．Elephants are being killed in large numbers.

4. What can we learn from the passage?

A．Fast-breeding fish do not need protection.

B．The decline in deep-sea fish has occurred in the last 20 years.

C．The results of overfishing should be taken seriously.

D．The destruction of the deep-sea environment does not affect human life.