Cate walked slowly through the empty house one more time, memories crowding in.“Good-bye, kitchen,“ she whispered. A shiny spot on the worm linoleum (油布) stood out where the refrigerator had been until yesterday afternoon. Cate rubbed her sneaker over a pink stain in the carpet. That was where she’d spilled a glass of grape juice when she was seven.
Cate’s throat tightened when she passed the door to the laundry room. Short lines were pencilled across the door frame, with tiny numbers written next to them. Cate ran a finger over the numbers as she read them out loud.
“Age two, thirty-four inches. Age three, thirty eight inches. Age four, forty inches. Age five, forty-four inches.” “Stand up straight, now.” her dad would say as she stood against the wall. Then he’d place the ruler on her head and mark the frame with his pencil. Whoever bought the house would just paint over the numbers. All the growing up she’d done here wouldn’t mean anything to them.
“Cate! We’re almost ready to leave. Do you have everything?”
Cate jumped, startled. “Um, yes, I guess so.”
“All right. let’s go.“
Well it was no use daydreaming now, she thought, blinking back tears. They were moving, and there was nothing she could do about it. The only thing she was sure about was that she didn’t like the new house.
”So, what do you think?“ Mom asked. ”I think it’s the nicest one we’ve looked at.“
“Not as nice as our old house.” Cate murmured under her breath. Mom pulled her into a hug“Cate, I know you miss our old house, but we can’t go back to it. Dad’s job is here now. Why don’t you take a look outside?" Mom suggested.
Cate sighed and walked out the front door, banging it noisily behind her. The yard was big, with lots of old oak trees that stretched their branches up to the second-floor windows. Cate noticed that one huge oak tree (橡树) had wooden steps nailed up the side of it. She climbed up the oak.
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。
Paragraph 1:
As Cate settled back in the tree, a large knothole (节孔) in the opposite tree trunk caught her eye.
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Paragraph 2:
With trembling fingers, Cate took out a piece of paper from the metal box.
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No matter the time or place, sports fans love to debate. When the question popped up recently about
There’s just one problem. They and many other popular candidates, like Michael Jordan, Simone Biles, Usain Bolt, and Peléto
Take these two star athletes from 2,000 years ago: the charioteers Flavius Scorpus and Gaius Appuleius Diocles. Some quick stats (统计):
3 . A new study found that 15-year-olds told more coherent (连贯的) stories about turning points in their lives if their mothers had been taught the new conversational techniques 14 years earlier. These adolescents also reported fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety compared to adolescents in the study whose mothers had talked with their toddlers (初学走路的孩子) as usual.
In the research,115 mothers of toddlers were assigned to either a control group without any training or an experimental group given training in elaborative reminiscine (详尽回忆) for a year. The training involves open and responsive conversations with young children about every day past events.
Project lead Professor Elaine Reese says adolescents whose mothers had participated in the earlier coaching sessions narrated difficult events from their lives — such as parental divorce or cyber-bullying with more insight into how the experience had shaped as people.
Professor Reese says, “Our findings suggest parents’ sharing memories early in children’s lives can have long-lasting benefits, both for the way adolescents process and talk about difficult life events and for their well-being. For example, it helps children develop more complete, specific, and accurate memories of their experiences, providing a richer store of memories to use when telling their own stories. It also teaches children how to have open discussions about past feelings when they’re no longer in the heat of the moment.”
Professor Reese hopes parents and policy makers realize the importance of early childhood as the ideal time for starting to have positive conversations with children, and to know that these conversations can make a difference as children grow older. “The ultimate goal is to encourage parents to have more sensitive and responsive conversations about events in their children’s lives.”
The researchers intend to continue the study, following up with participants in emerging adulthood to determine any ongoing effects of their theirs mother’s elaborative reminiscine.
1. According to the text, all mothers involved in the research ________.| A．were trained how to talk with kids for a year |
| B．had children who were about one year old |
| C．took part in the follow-up research annually |
| D．had experienced some difficult events in life |
| A．Coaching sessions with parents benefit toddlers. |
| B．Parents need to learn new conversational techniques. |
| C．Parents’ elaborative reminiscing can fight depression. |
| D．Sharing memories sets kids on path to better well-being. |
| A．They went through more turning points in life. |
| B．They had a richer store of memories to refer to. |
| C．They could well remember what happened in life. |
| D．They had better language skills to describe events. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Favorable. | C．Concerned. | D．Doubtful. |
4 . U.S. life expectancy is currently 78.6 years——a number determined by factors including genes, gender, lifestyle and luck. But the single best predictor of longevity (寿命) might be geography. Growing evidence suggests people’s ZIP codes might hold the most information about how long they’ll live.
Researchers from the New York University School of Medicine recently used data from NYU Langone Health’s City Health Dashboard to find that 56 of the 500 largest U.S. cities are home to people who can expect to live at least 20 fewer years than those in other neighborhoods, even if they’re just away. In Chicago, the city with the largest differences, life expectancy varied by 30.1 years between neighborhoods; in both Washington D.C. and New York City, it varied by more than 27 years between neighborhoods.
Where you live directly affects your health in a number of ways, from exposure to air pollution to accessibility of healthy food, green space and medical care. It’s also an indicator of socioeconomic (社会经济学的) factors related to health and longevity, including race and income. The NYU researchers also found that the cities with the widest gaps in life expectancy were those most separated by race and ethnicity (种族划分), with minority neighborhoods often facing obstacles, like unaffordable housing costs or poor social services. But these problems didn’t affect majority white neighborhoods to the same degree. Chicago is far more separated than most U.S. cities, and largely black neighborhoods on the South Side have the city’s lowest life expectancies.
Links among race, poverty and health have been strengthened by years of inequality, and removing them won’t be easy. However, the NYU researchers argue understanding the ties between ZIP codes and health can help local lawmakers, public-health officials and community representatives begin to level the playing field for their voters.
1. What does “ZIP codes” refer to?| A．Where people live. |
| B．How people live their life. |
| C．Whether are lucky. |
| D．What genes people have. |
| A．People in different cites had different life expectancies |
| B．People in Chicago lived longer than those in New York. |
| C．People in Washington D. C. had the lowest life expectancies. |
| D．Life expectancy differed among people in the same district. |
| A．Medical care. | B．Air pollution. |
| C．Ethnicity. | D．Social service. |
| A．Influences of ZIP codes on different people |
| B．Links between ZIP codes and longevity. |
| C．Ways to improve people’s life expectancy. |
| D．Importance of removing inequality. |
5 . I used to make the same New Year’s resolution every year——to simplify my life and make time for me——but I was always too busy to stick with it for very long. Change is not easy for me. I liked helping people and hated to say “no” when I was asked for help. I was so overcommitted that I didn’t have time to just sit and read a book.
As I ran from task to task, I could never outrun the feeling that something was missing, that was real happiness, which seemed just out of reach. I felt like I was missing a key piece of the instructions on how to put my life together.
My real awakening came about in a strange way a few years ago. We were having the inside of our house painted and so we had to all the decorations out of the painters’ way as they moved from room to room. Somehow, we got along quite well without all the items we had collected over the years. Then we decided to think hard about what we would put back. Finally, we removed many decorations because they made the rooms feel small and cluttered (杂乱的). We put back only the things we really wanted. The house felt so much more open, peaceful and beautiful.
When I started to hang our calendar back up, I noticed how full each day was. Every square was filled in. I decided to continue my decluttering (清理) with the calendar. It was near the end of July, so I started “clearing” August and September. I kept doctors’ appointments, family events and commitments to church. But I removed extra tasks I had taken on.
Now I’m more relaxed. I’ve learned to say “no” when I was asked for help. I feel like I have blessed others by donating our unused items to charity. But, most of all, I schedule time for me each day to do what I want. The uncluttered beauty of our home and schedule gives me great peace and joy.
1. The underlined word “outrun” in para 2 can be best replaced by ________.| A．live without | B．escape from | C．stick to | D．take control of |
| A．She was too stressed out to continue her busy calendar. |
| B．The busy calendar couldn’t bring her happiness any more. |
| C．She gradually changed her attitude towards helping others. |
| D．The joy from decluttering her home encouraged the change. |
| A．Go to church. | B．see a dentist. |
| C．Complete extra work. | D．Attend family gatherings. |
| A．The Cleanup |
| B．My Busy Schedule |
| C．Regain peace and Joy |
| D．Live a Simple Life |
6 . The Hay Festival (of Literature&Arts) is a book festival. It takes place in Hayon-Wya, a small town in Wales. The festival is held every year, and lasts for ten days between May and June. It attracts over 80,000 visitors and many important writers give readings or discuss their works. The festival started in 1988 and is sponsored by The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Glyndebourne is a festival of opera. It’s organized in a private house: Glyndebourne, which is on the south coast of England. The festival has been held there every summer since 1934. The operas are performed in a specially-designed theatre in the gardens. The festival specializes in the works of Mozart. Visitors to the festival listen to operas in the afternoon. Then, they have picnics in Glyndebourne’s beautiful gardens.
Cheltenham is a horse racing festival held in a town in western England. One of the days falls on St Patrick’s Day (on 17th March), Ireland’s national day. The biggest race of the four-day event is the Cheltenham Gold Cup, one of the most important races in the horse racing calendar. During the festival, hundreds of millions of pounds are gambled on the 28 races.
The Great British Beer Festival is a ...beer festival. It’s held in Olympia (an exhibition centre in London) for a week every August. Over 1,000 different British and foreign beers are served. There are lots of unusual drinks to taste, such as an Oscar Wilde, the Champion Beer of Britain 2011. But the festival isn’t only about beer. There’s live music, book signings and even tutorials on how to taste beer.
1. What do these festivals have in common?| A．They all can attract art. |
| B．They are all UK festivals. |
| C．They all date from the mid-20th century. |
| D．They are all held in private houses. |
| A．The Hay Festival. | B．Glyndebourne. |
| C．Cheltenham. | D．The Great British Beer Festival. |
| A．Learn how to make beer. |
| B．Perform live music on stage. |
| C．Sign their names on books. |
| D．Sample some unusual beers. |
7 . Many people may not find the idea of visiting Beijing's Forbidden City just to see its cultural relics(遗迹)very exciting. But what if you got to see deer there too? That certainly sounds like a better day out.
Nine deer were introduced into the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, on Sept. 26 and would make it their home until February. The beautiful animals are part of an exhibition on deer-related relics, including furniture, clothes and artworks. In ancient China, deer patterns(图案)could be seen on lots of items since lu—deer—were considered to be a lucky animal because the Chinese word shares the pronunciation(发音)of the character that means “official salary(俸禄)”.
The deer in the Palace Museum are not only to be part of the exhibition, but also to act as ambassadors(大使)to attract visitors. “It’s a better way to bring cultural relics closer to the people,”explained Wang Yamin, a deputy director at the Museum, according to ChinaDaily.
Turning itself into a zoo is the latest effort that the museum has made at introducing academic(学术的)art to ordinary people.
In 2014, for example, the museum’s online store started to offer products such as T-shirts featuring the pattern of an emperor's coat, and earphones looking like the necklaces worn by ancient officials. These products soon gained popularity on social media because they allowed people to wear a piece of history.
Two years later, the TV series MastersintheForbiddenCity(《我在故宫修文物》)lifted the mysterious veil(面纱)on the experts who work in the museum—people whose job is to repair the relics within it. And while many of us may have imagined these workers to be old and boring, they're actually quite young and interesting. Some are even in their 20s. They lead a peaceful career, although it can sometimes be dull. Workers aren't allowed to wear any make-up or do their nails(指甲)because the chemicals(化学物质)may damage the relics they're working on, for example.
Little by little, the Palace Museum is shaking off the stereotypes(刻板印象)of being an old-fashioned academic institution. As Shan Jixiang, the museum’s director, once said, “Academic research is not alien from the public’s interest. We’d like to make visiting the museum a part of people's daily lives. ”
It looks like the Forbidden City isn’t so forbidden after all.
1. What can be concluded about the deer in the Forbidden City?| A．They would stay in the museum for a whole year. |
| B．They are part of an exhibition as lucky animals. |
| C．They have been introduced to help attract visitors. |
| D．They were brought to the museum for an artwork study. |
| A．They were cheap and of high quality. |
| B．They combined culture with everyday items. |
| C．They featured mysterious patterns. |
| D．They were advertised on social media a lot. |
| A．think their job is boring | B．are mostly old but experienced |
| C．must be careful with their work | D．enjoy working on their own |
| A．An interesting exhibition on animal-related relics. |
| B．Popular products related to ancient Chinese culture. |
| C．What the Palace Museum does to protect cultural relics. |
| D．The Palace Museum’s efforts to change its image. |
9 . Experts say over half of the world’s seven thousand languages are in danger of disappearing. Every two weeks one language disappears.
Sometimes a language disappears immediately when the last person speaking it dies. Or, a local language might disappear more slowly. This happens when an official language is used more often and children stop learning the local language of their parents. Official languages often represent a form of control over a group of people.
Throughout history, the language spoken by a powerful group spreads across a civilization. The more powerful culture rarely respects the language and culture of smaller groups. Smaller cultures lose their local language as the language of the culture in power has a stronger influence.
Experts say protecting languages is very important for many reasons. Languages contain the histories, ideas and knowledge of a culture. Languages also contain valuable information about local medicines, plants and animals.
Many endangered languages are spoken by native cultures in close contact with the natural world. Their ancient languages contain a great deal of information about environmental systems and species of plants and animals that are unknown to scientists. As the last speakers of a language die off, the valuable information carried within a language also disappears. Language is, in many ways, a window to the mind and the world.
Any hope for protecting languages can be found in children and their willingness to learn. It is these young people who can keep this form of culture alive for future generations.
1. Which of the following is true?| A．There have existed 7,000 languages in history. |
| B．No one can prevent languages from disappearing. |
| C．There will not be any local languages left some day. |
| D．Half of the world’s languages will possibly disappear. |
| A．it represents the working of the human minds |
| B．local languages are more closely related to culture |
| C．ancient languages can reveal ancient people’s thoughts |
| D．it contains information about both culture and nature |
| A．children are interested in learning it | B．people are forced to speak it |
| C．it is linked to a powerful culture | D．it keeps pace with the times |
| A．local languages | B．language protection |
| C．the power of language | D．language and culture |
10 . Computers have become amazingly exact at translating spoken words to text messages and searching a large supply of valuable information for answers to difficult questions. At least, that is, so long as you speak English or other world's main languages. But try talking to your phone in Yoruba, Igbo or any number of widely spoken African languages and you'll find difficulty in accessing information, trade and other benefits of the global tech economy.
American tech giants don't have a long history of making their language technology work well outside the wealthiest markets, a problem that has also made it harder for them to discover dangerous misinformation on their platforms. Google, for instance, upset members of the Yoruba community when its language app mistranslated a nice African god as a devil. Part of the reason is that there's just not enough online data in those languages for the Al systems to effectively learn how to get better at understanding them.
“We are getting to the point where if a machine doesn't understand your language, it will be like it never existed,” said Vukosi Marivate, who has devoted some of his Al research to the southern African languages of Xitsonga and Setswana. “Considering our history, some of the bias (偏见) is intentional. The history of the African continent and in general in colonized (殖民化的) countries, is that when language had to be translated, it was translated in a very narrow way,” Marivate added.
However, Google and Microsoft are among the companies that say they are trying to improve technology for so-called "low-resource" languages that Al systems don't have enough data for. Computer scientists at Meta announced a breakthrough on the path to a "universal translator" that could translate multiple languages at once and work better with lower-resourced languages. Meanwhile, Marivate and other researchers have founded a research project across Africa. Increasingly, people are joining hands to develop a variety of language approaches.
1. What can we learn from Paragraphs 1 and 2?| A．Yoruba and Igbo are widely spoken in the world. |
| B．English speakers fail to access online information. |
| C．The online data of African languages is limited. |
| D．Computers can translate all text messages exactly. |
| A．To make a prediction. | B．To draw a comparison. |
| C．To reach a conclusion. | D．To give an example. |
| A．Friendly. | B．Unconcerned. | C．Dissatisfied. | D．Proud. |
| A．Joint Efforts to Improve AI in African Languages | B．Computers Good at Translating Spoken Language |
| C．US Tech Giants Misunderstand African Languages | D．African Researchers Exchange Ideas with Tech Giants |
