The frightening day of our diving test was here. Our parents thought we were lucky to have an Olympic-size swimming pool at the school. My mom stressed that the swimming pool was one of the best in our city. But I didn’t feel happy about it at all. Instead, I felt afraid of the swimming pool. It was mainly because I was terribly shy.
I was so shy that I always sat at the back of the room in class so I’d not be called upon to read. As for the present physical education class each Monday morning, I would work my way to the back of the line forming at the diving board so I would not have to practice the dives.
Now, it was another Monday morning - the morning of our diving test. My blood ran cold when the teacher Ms. Robbins announced that we would be graded for our final on the most difficult dive- the jackknife. And she added, “This diving test is important. The one who fails has to spare time in the following Monday mornings to practice diving in this swimming pool and attend this test again.”
My body kept shaking with fear as the line to the scary diving board shortened. As I watched, each student seemed to perform the challenging dive effortlessly. And shortly I would have to attempt something that I had never even practiced before.
Then I remembered someone telling me that when you picture yourself doing a skill over and over, it’s just as effective as physically practicing that skill. So I watched carefully as each classmate jumped at the end of the board once, added a jump for height, folded their body in half to reach for their toes, and finally straightened out like an arrow for going into the water. After carefully watching for a while, I was actually in a state of surprise, because all of a sudden I realized that it was possible for me to perform these four steps of diving.
Eventually all classmates except me finished jumping. The teacher announced that it was my turn.
注意：1. 续与词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With my heart knocking wildly, I walked down the diving board towards its end.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Knowing I failed, I climbed out of the pool, embarrassed.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I’ve had the pleasure and good fortune to live and work in several countries as an ESL(English as a Second Language)teacher. During one assignment(任务), I lived in Prague in the Czech Republic. I often took weekend trips to nearby cities to explore the countryside.
One weekend, I took a three-hour bus ride to visit a city with a fine castle and wonderful museums. Before I got off the bus, I checked the schedule in order to come back to the station timely; I was only planning a day trip and did not intend to stay overnight.
After a wonderful day seeing the sights, I had a brief dinner and had plenty of time to walk the half mile to catch the 6:15 bus. When I got there, no one was in line for the bus to Prague. Finally, I discovered the last bus for the day had left at 5:15.
This was a serious problem. About a month earlier, my pocket was picked and I lost about $1,000. To avoid having the same thing happen again, I only carried enough cash to cover my expenses for the day. I certainly did not have enough money to stay in a hotel. But with no transportation to Prague and being a positive person, I decided to try asking.
I first found the Youth Hotel, but it was completely full. Setting aside 5 crowns for the bus fare, I had 9 crowns to spend. Every hotel I tried to check into charged 22 to 25 crowns, until I had only one more recommendation. If it was too expensive, I’d have to spend the night on a park bench, an uncomfortable idea for someone almost 60 years old.
The hotel looked much nicer than I expected. It would surely cost more than 9 crowns. The desk clerk spoke some English, so I told her my story.
Paragraph 1:
The clerk listened carefully, and then asked me to wait.
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Paragraph 2:
I was deeply moved by the manager’s kindness and generosity.
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3 . For making contact and communicating with a person, effective eye contact is essential to our everyday interaction with people, and also to those who want to be effective communicators in public places.
Generally in Western societies and many other cultures, eye contact with a person is expected to be regular but not overly persistent.
Overly lasting eye contact is also a sign of a person’s over-awareness of the messages they are giving. In the case of people who try to lie to someone, they may distort (扭曲) their eye contact so that they’re not avoiding it.
However, Scotland’s University of Stirling found that, in a question-and-answer study among children, those who maintained eye contact were less likely to come up with the correct answer to a question than those who looked away to consider their response.
| A．This is a widely recognized indicator of lying |
| B．Constant eye contact is often considered to be rude |
| C．Eye contact is the act of looking into someone’s eyes |
| D．But there’s something you may not know about eye contact |
| E．Overpowering eye contact can make the other person excited |
| F．Even between humans and non-humans, lasting eye contact is sometimes unadvisable |
| G．Eye contact, as a socializing device, can take a surprising amount of effort to maintain |
4 . As we age, even if we’re healthy, the heart just isn’t as efficient in processing oxygen as it used to be. In most people the first signs show up in their 50s or early 60s. And among people who don’t exercise, the changes can start even sooner.
“Think of a rubber band. In the beginning, it is flexible, but put it in a drawer for 20 years and it will become dry and easily broken,” says Dr. Ben Levine, a heart specialist at the University of Texas. That’s what happens to the heart. Fortunately for those in midlife, Levine is finding that even if you haven’t been an enthusiastic exerciser, getting in shape now may help improve your aging heart.
Levine and his research team selected volunteers aged between 45 and 64 who did not exercise much but were otherwise healthy. Participants were randomly divided into two groups. The first group participated in a program of nonaerobic (无氧) exercise—balance training and weight training—three times a week. The second group did high-intensity aerobic exercise under the guidance of a trainer for four or more days a week. After two years, the second group saw remarkable improvements in heart health.
“We took these 50-year-old hearts and turned the clock back to 30-or 35-year-old hearts,” says Levine. “And the reason they got so much stronger and fitter was that their hearts could now fill a lot better and pump (泵送) a lot more blood during exercise.” But the hearts of those who participated in less intense exercise didn’t change, he says.
“The sweet spot in life to start exercising, if you haven’t already, is in late middle age when the heart still has flexibility,” Levine says. “We put healthy 70-year-olds through a yearlong exercise training program, and nothing happened to them at all.”
Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, says Levine’s findings are a great start. But the study was small and needs to be repeated with far larger groups of people to determine exactly which aspects of an exercise routine make the biggest difference.
1. What does Levine want to explain by mentioning the rubber band?| A．The right way of exercising. | B．The causes of a heart attack. |
| C．The difficulty of keeping fit. | D．The aging process of the heart. |
| A．Diet plan. | B．Professional background. |
| C．Exercise type. | D．Previous physical condition. |
| A．Middle-aged hearts get younger with aerobic exercise. |
| B．High-intensity exercise is more suitable for the young. |
| C．It is never too late for people to start taking exercise. |
| D．The more exercise we do, the stronger our hearts get. |
| A．Making use of the findings. | B．Interviewing the study participants. |
| C．Conducting further research. | D．Clarifying the purpose of the study. |
5 . Are you starting to feel a little burnt out by all the texts you’re getting? Constant conversations and messages make it harder to focus and could start stressing you out.
Set daily times when you’re available.
Make a clear schedule each day for when you check your messages and are available to have a conversation.
Use screen time limits for your app usage.
Change your settings so you can’t use apps when you run out of time. Set a time limit for how long you can use your messaging apps. Sometimes you may run out of time.
Changing your boundaries can be tough, so keep strengthening them. Even though you may still get a lot of text messages, stick to the limits you set for yourself so you don’t stress yourself out or feel the need to reply. Otherwise, if you keep responding when you said you’re unavailable, other people might be confused or get mixed messages.
Silence the person if they don’t respect your boundaries.
Don’t hesitate to cut off communication if they still won’t listen. Some people may not understand your boundaries no matter how often you remind them. If you’re still bombed with messages throughout the day, silence the person or turn off notices from the app they use so you don’t get notified.
| A．Be consistent with your boundaries. |
| B．And it is impolite or rude. |
| C．You may not be able to access the apps until the next day. |
| D．Reply to the messages occasionally. |
| E．Give yourself set hours to relieve the pressure of replying right away. |
| F．Avoid responding to those people and their messages, and you can pull yourself out of a stressful situation. |
| G．Luckily, putting limits on how often you reply leaves you under less pressure. |
Did you know chimpanzees(黑猩猩) have excellent mathematical and art skills? This was one of the ten studies
7 . One of Switzerland’s most popular ski areas has been covering mountain areas with cloth material in an effort to reduce ice melt aver the summer.
Workers have
But the Swiss government has
Currently, the reflective material covers about 100,000 square meters, which is about the
Collected
| A．produced | B．placed | C．transported | D．folded |
| A．losing | B．gathering | C．forming | D．breaking |
| A．colorful | B．decorative | C．fragile | D．reflective |
| A．absorb | B．block | C．explore | D．defend |
| A．in | B．under | C．over | D．through |
| A．resulting from | B．referring to | C．leading to | D．benefiting from |
| A．profit | B．promise | C．threat | D．opportunity |
| A．pollution | B．climate | C．population | D．economy |
| A．maintain | B．consume | C．attract | D．reduce |
| A．determined | B．doubled | C．proposed | D．predicted |
| A．emerge | B．disappear | C．drift | D．expand |
| A．unless | B．whether | C．if | D．although |
| A．continually | B．thoroughly | C．occasionally | D．eventually |
| A．melted | B．left | C．polluted | D．removed |
| A．climbers | B．scientists | C．skiers | D．employees |
| A．After | B．Before | C．Till | D．During |
| A．leaves | B．ice | C．covers | D．rubbish |
| A．length | B．value | C．quantity | D．size |
| A．forward | B．out | C．back | D．down |
| A．wood | B．cloth | C．water | D．snow |
8 . Why is there a shortage of HGV drivers?
The UK needs 100,000 more HGV drivers if it is to meet demand, according to the Road Haulage Association (BHA).
Hod McKenzie, from the organisation, told Sky News it was a “critical situation” and a “cocktail of chaos” had led to the crisis.
Retiring drivers
It says around 2,000 drivers are leaving the industry every week, often due to retirement, with only 1,000 new recruits joining over the same period. Mr McKenzie told Sky News, “
Cost of training and pay
“We want younger people to want to be truckers, and it’s expensive—at least £4,000, possibly £7,000—to train to be a trucker and that’s beyond the pockets of most young people,” he told Sky News. “So we’ve got to make it easier to take that financial burden away from them and make it easier for them to gel in and stay in.
Working conditions
A change to rules on how people pay tax has been blamed for some HGV drivers leaving the industry. The reform of the IR 35 rules were designed to prevent workers from setting up limited companies through which they pay less tax and National Insurance while working, in effect, as an employee.
| A．Tax changes |
| B．HGV driving tests |
| C．So what are the causes |
| D．What will be done to fix the problem |
| E．We’ve got an ageing population of lorry drivers |
| F．One of the problems we've had has been low pay and that’s now being addressed |
| G．Conditions at roadside services in the UK are “far worse” than in mainland Europe |
9 . A NASA spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid (小行星) is preparing to launch this week. The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will lift off at 10:20 p. m. PT on November 23, 2021 aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Live coverage of the event will air on NASA TV and the agency’s site. But the true test for this asteroid deflection (偏转) technology will come in September 2022, when the spacecraft reaches its destination, to see how it affects the motion of a near-Earth asteroid in space.
The mission target is Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos. This will be the agency’s first full-scale demonstration of this type of technology on behalf of planetary defense. It also will be the first time that humans have changed the motion of a solar system body in a measurable way, according to the European Space Agency.
It’s the perfect time for the DART mission to occur. Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth—within 11 million kilometers—in September 2022. The spacecraft will come speeding in at about 24,140 kilometers per hour, targeting Dimorphos, said Nancy Chabot, DART coordination leader at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The mission’s aim is to deliberately crash into Dimorphos to change the asteroid’s motion in space, according to NASA. This collision will be recorded by CubeSat, a companion cube satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency. It’s the Italian Space Agency’s first deep space mission.
The briefcase-size CubeSat will travel on DART and then be moved from it before impact (撞击) so it can record what happens. Three minutes after the impact, the CubeSat will fly by Dimorphos to capture images and video. The video of the impact will be streamed back to Earth, which should be “pretty exciting,” said Elena Adams, DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
1. Which of the following is true according to the text?| A．The Italian Space Agency has launched deep space missions before. |
| B．The spacecraft will reach its destination in September 2022. |
| C．Humans changed the motion of a solar system body in the past. |
| D．Didymos and Dimorphos are 11 million kilometers away from Earth now. |
| A．To destroy Dimorphos completely. | B．To be recorded by CubeSat. |
| C．To change the asteroid’s motion in space. | D．To show the technology. |
| A．Positive. | B．Skeptical. | C．Cautious. | D．Unclear. |
| A．NASA’s DART mission is set to launch. |
| B．A spacecraft will deliberately crash into the Moon. |
| C．NASA will show off its technology of defending the Earth. |
| D．A Space X Falcon 9 rocket will be launched this week. |
10 . Many of us check labels to ensure the food we buy is healthy. But how many of us check what we eat, is produced in a way that benefits the environment? Some fanning methods actually help reduce carbon emissions, for instance by removing carbon from the atmosphere and improving the quality of the soil. Many smaller-scale farmers use these “regenerative farming” practices, but big food companies are also getting on board.
So what is “regenerative farming” and how can you tell if the food is produced in this way? Asking questions about the fanning methods used to produce food may not provide the precise answers you want (unless you talk to the farmers). But interest in and knowledge about regenerative farming are growing, and shops may he able to investigate and come back to you.
How has produce been grown?
Farmers using a regenerative approach typically avoid or minimize tilling (犁地) to protect the structure of the soil and its microorganisms. These microorganisms are vital for soil fertility and protect crops from pests and disease. Good soil structure also helps to prevent flooding and pollution. Regenerative farmers also typically plant a groundcover of herbs, wildflowers and grasses. These add nitrogen (氮) to the soil, encourage wildlife and pollinators, help prevent erosion and flooding, and control weeds.
Have pesticides (杀虫剂) and artificial fertilizers (肥料) been used?
Regenerative farmers may maximize crop diversity and rotate crops to reduce the need for chemical inputs and support wildlife, because artificial fertilizers are responsible for about one percent of all global, carbon dioxide.
How has the product been transported?
How it is transported is important, and food air miles can have 100 times the carbon footprint of miles of transportation by sea. If fruit and vegetables aren’t in season when you buy them, try to find the miles if they have been flown in or grown in a hothouse heated by fossil fuels. “If you can’t buy direct from a local producer, and obviously many people can’t, you need to do some research,” a farmer says, “Try to make your supply chain as short as possible.”
What have the animals been fed?
There are environmental benefits to being grass-fed, and feeding animals imported grains may be bad for the environment.
1. Which of the following is a regenerative farming method?| A．Minimizing the microorganisms. | B．Limiting crop diversity. |
| C．Growing herbs, wildflowers and grasses. | D．Slopping using fertilizers. |
| A．picking up food from the nearby markets | B．feeding animals with imported grains |
| C．buying local products directly from farmers | D．transporting goods by air rather than by sea |
| A．Big food companies are starting to use regenerative farming. |
| B．Fruit grown in the hothouse isn't available everywhere. |
| C．It is no use asking farmers about the farming methods. |
| D．People are clear about how food is produced. |
| A．To instruct farmers how to farm regeneratively. |
| B．To encourage less use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers. |
| C．To promote local products to customers. |
| D．To teach customers how to tell regenerative farming. |
