Emily White was born seventeen years ago with so many birth problems in her body. Some of her organs, bones and muscles were out of shape. No one expected her to survive. She did make it but with her strange body figure, everyone could recognize her, even from a distance.
In Emily White’s hometown, there was a yearly outdoor performance in the school auditorium (大礼堂). It had been performed for so many years and actually had become one of the most important events of the Christmas season for many of the town’s people.
Many people tried out each year for it, but so many were turned away. It can only include the most excellent people in the field.
Emily had a beautiful singing voice. Last year she went to Mrs. Owens — her music teacher to ask to join in the performance. Without letting her sing, Mrs. Owens took a look at Amy’s body and said, “Child, you just don’t fit. Everyone would stare at you and that would make you uncomfortable. It would make them uncomfortable, too.”
Without singing a single note, Emily was sent back through the door of the choral room. Hurt and upset, she decided never to try out again. But Mrs. Owens then retired.
This year, there came a new music teacher, Mr. Buttler. He heard about Emily and suggested that she have a try.
Emily didn’t want to be rejected again, so she hesitated a little about it. As Emily struggled, the door was pushed open and Mr. Buttler called, “Emily, you’re next.” Although kind of nervous, Emily did as Mr. Buttler told her to do. Mr. Buttler sat by the piano to keep Emily company. When Emily finished her testing performance, she thanked Mr. Buttler and knew the result would be posted on the door of the choral room the next day.
Emily couldn’t sleep that night. She was suffering from the feelings that she didn’t fit and the great need to be accepted. By the next morning, her stomach was even in pain because of stress.
注意：续写词数应为150左右Paragraph 1: The next day, Emily nervously glanced at the list on the door of the choral room.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2: Finally, the day of performance came.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . My kids sit in Gee’s living room and carefully lift antique Christmas ornaments (装饰品) out of a delicate cardboard box. They gasp when’ they discover a tiny stuffed cat. Gee stands beside them, quietly explaining each treasure. “Ella, the story is that Tom and I built our ornament collection piece by piece during each year’s after-Christmas sale.” she tells me. She smiles as we leave with the box. Her precious treasures, gathered over a lifetime, have found a new home.
We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Someone had been returning our garbage cans to the garage each garbage day, and Jim and I had wondered who. Then one day we spotted him: an elderly man who lived across the street.
I baked cookies and left them on a stool outside the garage with a thank-you note. When we got home from work that day, a typed letter had replaced the gift. The letter was from Tom and explained how he had come to walk the neighborhood on garbage day, returning cans for people he barely knew. A few years after we d moved in, Tom died. We photocopied that letter and attached it to one of our own for Gee. We told her how special Tom had been to us. She wrote back and told us she still talked to Tom every day. When Gee invited us over to look through Christmas ornaments, I realized how hard it must be to part with that box, a piece of Tom.
These days, we’re piling up boxes of our own. We’re planning a move. The house that seemed so huge six years ago is filled to capacity with furniture and, books and toys and of course people. We know it’s time to go, and yet we can’t seem to stick the For Sale sign up on the lawn. Gaining a third bedroom and maybe an office sometimes seems like an awful trade for all we stand to lose.
The moving boxes are still neatly packed in our basement, but Jim and I agree to wait until January. This Christmas, we’ll decorate our tree with Gee’s ornaments, out of the box that is labeled in, Tom’s handwriting. Maybe I’ll talk to him just as Gee still does.
1. In which way did Gee and Tom build their ornament collection?| A．They developed it through donations. | B．They accumulated it from antique shops. |
| C．They gathered it from their Christmas gifts. | D．They acquired it through years of purchase. |
| A．He left his good deed a mystery. | B．He meant significantly to Jim and Ella. |
| C．He worked for the cleaning department. | D．He volunteered to guard the neighborhood. |
| A．It is very tough for Gee to give away the box. |
| B．Ella and Jim are eager to move to the new house. |
| C．Ella thinks it is a good deal to gain an extra room. |
| D．Ella’s Christmas tree is labeled in Tom’s handwriting. |
| A．Faithful. | B．Sympathetic. |
| C．Affectionate. | D．Tolerant. |
3 . Farming is destroying the planet, but there could be a much more environmentally friendly way to feed ourselves: using renewable energy to turn carbon dioxide into food. “This is becoming a reality,” says Pasi Vainikka at Solar Foods, a company that is building the first commercial-scale factory that will be able to make food directly from CO2.
There can be no doubt that immediate attention to find greener ways to grow food is required. Conventional agriculture, including organic farming, causes damage to the environment in many ways. It requires a lot of land, leading to habitat loss and deforestation. It is also the source of a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and releases other pollutants. It isn’t very efficient, either. Crops typically transform less than 1 percent of light energy into usable biomass (生物量).
Instead, Solar Foods plans to avoid photosynthesis (光合作用) altogether, and grow bacteria that use hydrogen as their source of energy. At the factory, renewable electricity will be used to split water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will be added to large containers, where the bacteria grow, along with CO2 and ammonia (氨气). The end result will be a yellow powder called Solein.
Solein is made of bacterial cells and is up to 70 percent protein. It can be used as an ingredient in all kinds of foods. “We are aiming at replacing animal-sourced proteins, which we think have the highest environmental impact,” says Vainikka.
Compared with plant crops, Solein will use 100 times less water per kilogram of protein produced, 20 times less land and emit a fifth as much CO2, according to Solar Foods. There are other benefits, too: factories could be situated anywhere in the world and production won’t be affected by weather conditions.
“With Solar Foods and other companies scaling up their systems, this is truly beginning a new era of agriculture,” says Dorian Leger at Connectomix Bio in Germany. “I think these trends are exciting and will help bend the carbon curve as well as lead to improved global food supply security.”
1. What is the author’s purpose in mentioning conventional agriculture in paragraph 2?| A．To demonstrate its influence on crops. |
| B．To compare different farming methods. |
| C．To provide an example of agricultural types. |
| D．To highlight the urgent need for alternatives. |
| A．Its storage condition. | B．Its production process. |
| C．Its ingredient materials. | D．Its investment potential. |
| A．it is protein-rich |
| B．it is resource-efficient |
| C．its production is weather sensitive |
| D．its production is location-independent |
| A．The prospect of Solein remains to be seen, |
| B．Solein can help achieve global food safely. |
| C．Solein will dominate the agricultural development. |
| D．The use of Solein may help reduce carbon emissions. |
4 . There was a time in my life when I lost everything. Infected by a rare bacterium, I lost the ability to walk and
I lost friends, who lost
Facing all these losses, most people would fall into
My health
When bad things happen, it doesn’t mean that better things aren’t down the line. We just need to
| A．rose up | B．rolled up | C．ended up | D．turned up |
| A．temper | B．patience | C．cooperation | D．touch |
| A．status | B．wealth | C．fame | D．career |
| A．purpose | B．trust | C．loss | D．shame |
| A．conflict | B．crisis | C．divorce | D．departure |
| A．poverty | B．despair | C．confusion | D．trouble |
| A．hope | B．relief | C．courage | D．strength |
| A．fight | B．respond | C．twist | D．heal |
| A．declined | B．performed | C．returned | D．changed |
| A．accidentally | B．cautiously | C．quickly | D．deliberately |
| A．compared | B．discussed | C．integrated | D．simplified |
| A．entered | B．influenced | C．benefited | D．shaped |
| A．friendly | B．flexible | C．strategic | D．romantic |
| A．revealed | B．marked | C．preserved | D．recorded |
| A．get close to | B．hold on to | C．let go of | D．take notice of |
5 . In 2022, campaign group Fashion Revolution Chelsea dye a garden for its Chelsea Flower Show presentation. An ancient craft, natural dyeing is a practice whose time has come again, with hand tie-dyed fashion also making a comeback in recent years.
The revival has been encouraged by Covid lockdowns, “which allowed people to explore the craft at home, says natural-dyeing enthusiast and teacher Susan Dye. It’s unlikely, though, that the practice would have caught on in quite the same way if not for a continually growing discomfort about fashion’s heavy footprint. From carbon emissions to animal cruelty, fashion is under considerable inspection. “Put it this way, 97% of dyes used in the industry are petrochemically (石油化学产品) based,” says sustainable fashion consultant Jackie Andrews, who helped advise the UN Ethical Fashion Initiative. We’ve got net zero targets which mean we’re going to have to remove all those petrochemicals from the manufacturing cycle.
Fashion is a huge polluter. According to the UN Environment Program, the industry is responsible for up to one-fifth of all industrial water pollution—due to the fact that most clothes today are produced in poorer countries where regulation is weak and enforcement weaker. Waste water is dumped directly into rivers and streams, poisoning the land as well as the water sources of people and animals who rely on them.
It’s easy to see why someone who cares about people, planet and animals, as well as clothes, might turn to natural plant dyeing. From the beauty of the raw materials—often wild plants-to the property of only bonding with natural fiber like cotton and linen (亚麻布) from the minor footprint of recycling old clothing that has grayed or faded over time to the vibrant and long-lasting dyeing results, plant dyeing feels like a quiet act of rebellion. This is why, while beginners start with simply changing their clothes’ color, new worlds open. Many of today’s natural dyers grow their own dye plants, run local community workshops, and advocate for change in industrialized fashion systems and beyond.
1. What is the main reason for the growing discomfort mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．The adoption of petrochemical-based dyes |
| B．The disturbing consequences of the fashion industry. |
| C．The fashion industry’s focus on luxurious designs. |
| D．The challenging net zero targets to be achieved. |
| A．By making a comparison. | B．By listing numbers |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By introducing a new topic |
| A．A protest against turning to natural fiber. |
| B．An objection to recycling old clothing |
| C．A resistance to vibrant colors in natural dyeing |
| D．A struggle for a sustainable fashion industry |
| A．The Environmental Impact of Natural Dyeing |
| B．The Return of Natural Dyeing with Ethical Appeal |
| C．Fashion Revolution’s Dye Garden Presentation |
| D．The Petrochemical Dye Industry and Its Challenges |
1. When did Mozart begin to compose music?
| A．At the age of four. | B．At the age of five. | C．In his early teens. |
| A．In Milan. | B．In Vienna. | C．In Salzburg. |
| A．He did business. | B．He taught for a living. | C．He composed music. |
1. What is the man doing?
| A．Attending a lecture. |
| B．Conducting an interview. |
| C．Holding a press conference. |
| A．Take photography classes in an art school. |
| B．Work as a photographer in the future. |
| C．Do multiple jobs at the same time. |
| A．Develop photos of different colors and sizes. |
| B．Host photographic exhibitions to make money. |
| C．Present geographic features by photographing in various places. |
| A．To follow some set routines. |
| B．To satisfy the needs of customers. |
| C．To express the voices of some people. |
1. Why does the woman want to plant vegetables?
| A．To save money. | B．To sell fresh food. | C．To try a new hobby. |
| A．The lack of gardening skills. |
| B．The limited room for gardening. |
| C．The time to clean the backyard. |
| A．Purchase some seeds. |
| B．Check out a website. |
| C．Ask neighbors for help. |
1. How often does the man run?
| A．Twice a week. | B．Four days a week. | C．Every day. |
| A．Short distance. | B．Middle distance. | C．Long distance. |
| A．In 3 minutes and 47 seconds. |
| B．Within 4 minutes. |
| C．In about 6 minutes. |
1. What are the speakers talking about?
| A．How to start a speech. |
| B．How to behave in public. |
| C．How to connect with people. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Disapproving. |
