4 . Last summer, I was suffering from too much stress. I’d just graduated from a(n)
Generally seeing natural beauty would have
A dragonfly (蜻蜓) buzzed around me.With each
I watched that dragonfly carefully for many minutes. So did the dragonfly. “It’s not a matter of relaxing,” it seemed to say. “Life is so short.Be here in the
| A．interesting | B．challenging | C．meaningful | D．grateful |
| A．party | B．gathering | C．vacation | D．lecture |
| A．tradition | B．strength | C．criterion | D．habit |
| A．in time | B．at ease | C．as usual | D．in case |
| A．relaxed | B．annoyed | C．teased | D．urged |
| A．finally | B．casually | C．repeatedly | D．significantly |
| A．disappearance | B．movement | C．advance | D．performance |
| A．convinced | B．informed | C．formed | D．changed |
| A．reminded | B．made | C．spoke | D．took |
| A．progress | B．admiration | C．position | D．mood |
| A．life | B．moment | C．time | D．future |
| A．decided on | B．agreed on | C．dawned on | D．relied on |
| A．value | B．content | C．reality | D．principle |
| A．concerned | B．doubtful | C．regretful | D．satisfied |
| A．abuse | B．enjoy | C．suit | D．conduct |
5 . In 1975, a San Diego homemaker named Marjorie Rice came across a column in Scientific American about tiling (瓷砖). There is a problem which has interested mathematicians since ancient Greek times. After Rice’s chance encounter with tiling, family members often saw her in the kitchen constantly drawing shapes. “I thought she was just drawing casually (随意),” her daughter Kathy said. But Rice who took only one year of math in high school, was actually discovering never-before-seen patterns.
Born in Florida, she loved learning and particularly her brief exposure to math, but tight budget and social culture prevented her family from even considering that she might attend college. “For Rice, math was a pleasure,” her son David once said.
Rice gave one of her sons a subscription to Scientific American partly because she could read it carefully while the children were at school. When she read Gardner’s column about tiling as she later recalled in an interview: “I thought it must be wonderful that someone could discover these beautiful patterns which no one had seen before.” She also wrote in an essay, “My interest was engaged by the subject and I wanted to understand every detail of it. Lacking a mathematical background, I developed my own symbol system and in a few months discovered a new type.”
Astonished and delighted, she sent her work to Gardner, who sent it to Doris, a tiling expert at Moravian College. Doris confirmed that Rice’s finding was correct.
Later, Rice declined to lecture on her discoveries, citing shyness, but at Doris’s invitation, she attended a university mathematics meeting, where she was introduced to the audience. Rice still said nothing of her achievements to her children, but they eventually found out as the awards mounted.
1. Why did Rice often draw shapes in the kitchen?| A．To become a mathematician. | B．To explore the secret of tiling. |
| C．To fill her leisure time. | D．To show her passion for drawing. |
| A．She longed to start a column. | B．She was rejected from a college. |
| C．She was good at designing patterns. | D．She succeeded in developing a system. |
| A．The magic of math. | B．The efforts of Rice. |
| C．The humility of Rice. | D．The patterns of tiling. |
| A．Nothing is impossible to a willing mind. | B．Actions speak louder than words. |
| C．Every cloud has a silver lining. | D．Practice makes perfect. |
7 . About 7,000 languages in use today speak to the fact that our species is born to communicate. But while we tend to view language as merely a consequence of our extraordinary cognitive (认知的) powers, Caleb Everett thinks there may be more going on. Everett argues in his book “A Myriad of Tongues: How Languages Reveal Differences in How We Think” that language itself may influence our understanding of the world and our experience of time and space.
Such a challenging idea might have caused arguments a few decades ago, says Everett, because linguists (语言学家) restricted themselves to analyzing languages of industrialized, higher-income countries. These are relatively similar, so they encourage speakers to think along broadly similar lines, he says. But we now know they fall short of representing the variety of languages spoken today — and the more we learn about understudied languages, the more evidence we find for the complicated interaction between language and thinking.
Consider Berinmo, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea. Unlike English speakers, explains Everett, Berinmo speakers struggle to remember whether an object they were shown earlier was blue or green — perhaps because that language doesn’t distinguish between these colors. But it does make a formal distinction between yellowish-greens and other greens, and Berinmo speakers typically find it easy to remember which of these colors an object they saw earlier was, while English speakers struggle to do this.
Everett’s book celebrates two main subjects: understudied languages, with the interesting insights they offer, and the careful work of linguists, cognitive scientists, and other experts to explore the way language influences our thinking.
As Everett stresses, this work is vital as we live through a language extinction event predicted to see the loss of about 30 percent of today’s languages by 2100. His book makes it clear that this is more than just a tragedy for local communities. Given the insights that languages offer into the human mind, their disappearance is detrimental to us all.
1. What does Everett’s book discuss?| A．How many languages are still in use. |
| B．How language may impact our world view. |
| C．How humans gain languages since birth. |
| D．How language promotes mental development. |
| A．By following advice from language experts. |
| B．By interviewing different cognitive scientists. |
| C．By gaining insights from minority languages. |
| D．By contrasting the world’s dominant languages. |
| A．It is accurate in describing objects. | B．It is greatly influenced by English. |
| C．It has a decreasing number of users. | D．It has a unique way of telling colors apart. |
| A．Harmful. | B．Familiar. | C．Essential. | D．Strange. |
8 . If you think about World Heritage Sites, you probably think of places associated with ancient art and culture and historical buildings. And of course, many of these are on the World Heritage List (WHL). These include remains of ancient cultures like Cuzco in Peru or the rock city of Petra in Jordan as well as old city centers such as Rome in Italy. Also common are places of artistic or cultural significance, like the Stonehenge stone circle in England. But the WHL contains a lot of sites that are not so obvious. Let’s look at a few of the more unusual sites on the WHL and why it is important to preserve them.
Citadel of Haiti
These monuments were built at the end of the 19th century when Haiti became independent and the many thousands of black slaves in Haiti were free for the first time. These ex-slaves built the monuments, which the WHL describes as “a universal symbol of liberty”.
Borders of France and Spain
This is an area of great natural beauty and the mountains have many interesting geological formations.
But it is also an area of small farms. The WHL has listed the site because it shows us about past European society through its landscape of villages, farms, fields, up land pastures and mountain roads.
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
This railway in India was opened in 1881 and is still operating today. It crosses a difficult area of mountain landscape and it is a great example of railway engineering. The WHL says that it is “the first, and still the most outstanding, example of a hill passenger railway.”
The city of Brasilia
Brasilia is a capital city that was created from nothing in 1956. The WHL calls it “a land mark in the history of town planning”. The different areas of the city and the buildings themselves were all designed at the same time so that they would harmonize with each other.
1. What’s the function of the examples of World Heritage Sites in paragraph 1?| A．To highlight the importance of WHL. |
| B．To exemplify sites of artistic and cultural value. |
| C．To compare the differences between various sites. |
| D．To draw readers’ attention to more unique sites on the WHL. |
| A．Former slaves. | B．Citizens in Haiti. |
| C．Active revolutionaries. | D．Haiti government. |
| A．Citadel of Haiti. | B．Borders of France and Spain. |
| C．The city of Brasilia. | D．The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. |
9 . Taking exercise can be boring. The good news is that there are some tips which we can apply to our everyday fitness routines
•Have an objective.
When we’re playing a game, there’s always an objective. It helps us focus on the task at hand and motivates us to keep playing until we win the game. Exercise should be no different. Create a clear fitness goal.
•Add an element of whimsy (奇思妙想)
Some people love video games because there’s a lot of unexpectedness and surprise.
•
In a study, a team of researchers challenged 602 overweight workers from a single company to take part in a step-tracking challenge. The group asked to compete against other workers ended up walking more steps than any other groups in the study. If we’re seeking a similar motivation, look into fitness programs that encourage friendly competition.
•Team up with others.
| A．Compete against others. |
| B．Aim to walk 10,000 steps a day, for example. |
| C．Play against a friend to get competitive. |
| D．No one wanted to let their team members down. |
| E．And there are plenty of digital tools that can help with this. |
| F．We can copy these features into our own fitness game designs. |
| G．Getting a group to work together is also an effective way. |
10 . We were sitting in the doctor’s waiting room when my father said something that
The doctor told us my father had Alzheimers (阿尔茨海默病). It was a big
As the disease continued to progress, his behaviors became
Babies are born helpless; parents keep on
When a(n)
| A．disappointed | B．shocked | C．delighted | D．satisfied |
| A．chance | B．goal | C．challenge | D．plan |
| A．ready | B．brave | C．unsuitable | D．unprepared |
| A．took hold of | B．got rid of | C．paid attention to | D．got used to |
| A．unhappiness | B．inability | C．courage | D．power |
| A．normal | B．regular | C．strange | D．patient |
| A．care | B．advice. | C．intention. | D．trust |
| A．expected | B．refused | C．feared | D．needed |
| A．complaining | B．wondering | C．explaining | D．giving |
| A．following | B．connecting | C．changing | D．spreading |
| A．since | B．if | C．although | D．until |
| A．mistake | B．problem | C．mission | D．object |
| A．Obviously | B．Universally | C．Fortunately | D．Generally |
| A．get through | B．learn from | C．turn down | D．make out |
| A．provided | B．presented | C．rewarded | D．responded |
