1 . My kitchen may be the best kitchen on the planet. That is because when I look out of its window can see the west side of Grandeur Peak. Grandeur Peak is one of the most attractive mountains in central Wasatch, with its animals, trees, morning clouds, evening sunset, and the mountain’s paragliders (滑翔伞运动员).
The number of paragliders flying above Grandeur Peak has grown over the past 15 years, so much so that they have become part of the mountain. But during the past year they have largely disappeared. Some paragliders told me that the wind became too strong to fly in. The wind is too strong! Is this another character of our changing climate (气候)? Will paragliding be a sport affected by a warming planet? Utah has been much windier in the past few years. For me, a scientist who studies living things, it is easy to believe that our future will be windier. This year it’s getting super-hot, and the planet is warming faster than scientists expected. I can’t help but worry that the future of paragliding in Utah is not bright.
I’m writing to the brave people who fly from Grandeur Peak with beautiful wings. I want you to join Clean The Dam Air, a group that’ s working hard to fight climate change and air pollution — I’m part of it too. We are introducing a measure, which aims to remove the state sales tax (税) on grocery store food and put a carbon tax on fossil fuels (化石燃料) in its place: gas, electricity produced from fossil fuels, and natural gas. The goal isn’t to make taxes higher. The idea is to encourage everyone to reduce their use of fossil fuels. So, paragliders, join us. Now is the time to take care of our planet. If we succeed, then Utah can be an example to others in fighting climate change.
1. Why does the author mention his kitchen?| A．To share his love of cooking dishes. |
| B．To bring back his memories of paragliding. |
| C．To introduce Grandeur Peak’s paragliding. |
| D．To describe his adventures around Grandeur Peak. |
| A．The author saw less paragliding. | B．Few people visited Grandeur Peak. |
| C．Air pollution became serious in Utah. | D．Strong winds stopped people going outside. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Supportive. | C．Positive. | D．Worried. |
| A．Buy those foods that are taxed less. |
| B．Reduce flying with wings in Grandeur Peak. |
| C．Join him to support a program about taxing. |
| D．Join a group to improve their paragliding skills. |
2 . When you hear the word “culture”, you may think of nations or societies.
Everyone has a unique culture that determines who they are as a person. Your family culture helps you understand your traditions and explains the reason for your behavior every day. It’s important to you.
After this, it’s time to write a detailed description of your family’s culture.
The last step is to share it with people. You can talk to your family about their culture and let them know that you’ve written down what they are like. You can also talk to friends who know little about your family’s culture.
Exploring your family’s culture is an exciting process that will bring new meaning to everything you’ve ever held dear. So start your journey of uncovering it right now!
| A．This is a key part of the process. |
| B．But every family has a culture, too. |
| C．Know how to talk with your family. |
| D．Start by researching your family’s history. |
| E．It also contributes to your family togetherness. |
| F．Then they can start a process of self-exploration. |
| G．So they will know better what your family is all about. |
3 . Starting a new job can be stressful, and doing so when you work fully from home can bring added challenges.
Get to know your colleagues
Not sitting beside your colleagues can feel like a barrier to connect remotely. Attend any online training or other meetings that your team holds, even if they are optional.
Communicate with confidence
“
Understand your workplace
Working remotely can mean it takes a little longer to know about how people like to work. See if your organization provides things like diagrams that show the team’s structure. You can start and maintain conversations with your line manager and other team members.
Introduce simple techniques like going for a walk, listening to music to achieve this, and making time to meet with friends after work can all help, too. When you’re in a better mindset overall, you’ll be in the best position to settle into your new venture.
| A．Keep in a good mood |
| B．Eye contact is still relevant |
| C．Pay attention to their immediate responses |
| D．This will surely help you get to know others |
| E．This will definitely contribute to your better mindset |
| F．You can adjust yourself to settling into a remote role, though |
| G．Understanding how they like to work will help not just you but them |
4 . The Five Biggest Stadiums in London
Wembley Stadium
Wembley Stadium has been an important part of London’s sports culture since 1923. This stadium is the home of the England national football team and has hosted numerous sports events throughout the years. The FA Cup final is held at the stadium every year. It has a seating capacity of 90,000, and its grand arch can be seen for miles all around the city.
Twickenham Stadium
Built in 1907, the Twickenham stadium is one of the oldest sports venues in the United Kingdom, which has a seating capacity of 82,000 and is one of the architectural wonders of London. It is the largest rugby union-specific stadium in the world. The Twickenham Stadium has a capacity of 82,000 people. It is owned by the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the English rugby union governing body and serves as the association’s headquarters. The stadium is home to the England National Rugby Union Team.
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is one of the newest stadiums in London and first opened its doors back in the spring of 2019. It has a seating capacity of 62,850 and is one of the most modern and unique stadiums in the world of football. It has been designed to maximize fan experience, with innovative features like the world’s first dividing, retractable (可伸缩的) football field, which allows it to be used for other events.
London Stadium
London Stadium opened in 2012 to host the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. After the games concluded, it was turned into a multi-purpose stadium with seating for up to 80,000 people. The stadium has an attractive structural design of lightweight steel and retractable seating that can be transformed into an athletics track in a matter of hours.
Emirates Stadium
Emirates Stadium is home to one of the most popular and successful football clubs in English football, Arsenal. This state-of-the-art venue was opened in 2006 and has a seating capacity of 60,000 people.
1. Of the following stadiums, which is the oldest?| A．Emirates Stadium. | B．Twickenham Stadium. |
| C．Wembley Stadium. | D．Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. |
| A．Both have hosted the Olympics. | B．Both have retractable facilities. |
| C．Both are famous for their grand arches. | D．Both are home to the England national football team. |
| A．The FA Cup final has been held at the stadium since 1923. |
| B．The Twickenham stadium is the oldest sports venues in the United Kingdom. |
| C．London Stadium was built in 2012 to host the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. |
| D．Emirates Stadium is one of the most welcome football clubs in English football. |
5 . Dusting is particularly annoying. Nearly two-thirds of household dust content comes from the outdoors, some of which may contain harmful chemicals. So, keeping your home as dust-free as possible is important to improve overall health.
In general, you should dust your home’s most exposed surfaces on a weekly basis. This means items such as tables, shelves, beds, dressers, counter-tops and windows.
Change your bed sheets weekly, as dust mites (螨) especially love bedding.
Since so much dust comes in from the outdoors, you can cut down on the amount gathering in your home by keeping doors and windows closed as often as possible, and placing carpets on both sides of doors.
Get rid of odds and ends, which can easily attract dust, and be careful how you handle clothes. Since clothes both collects dust and sheds (掉落) fibers, regularly wash any clothes or don’t throw clothing on the ground.
When you’re getting ready to clean a room, always work from the top down.
| A．If you dust from the bottom up |
| B．How can we keep the home dust-free |
| C．Why should we keep the home dust-free |
| D．You can remove your shoes when you come home |
| E．You can buy some new shoes before you return home |
| F．Don’t use feather dusters that simply push the dust around |
| G．Items that don’t collect dust easily can go a month without cleaning |
6 . Slobodchikoff, a biologist who has spent years working to better understand the calls of dogs, used that knowledge to help people who were having trouble with their pets.
A man reported his dog wanted to bite him. So Slobodchikoff went to the man’s house. He watched as the owner walked over to the dog, towered over the pet and then said, “Good dog!” in a low-pitched(音高) voice. “The dog ran into a corner,” Slobodchikoff recalled. The owner had scared the dog. Slobodchikoff recommended that the man should do the opposite. The owner took that advice—and ended up developing a great relationship with his pet.
Not everyone has the time to study dog communications or the money to bring in an expert. Slobodchikoff thinks tech could help. He thinks a cell phone app or device that you could point at a dog. This would record video and audio(音频) of a dog’s behavior and then upload it.An artificial intelligence(AI)system would later analyze it.
The AI “ would translate this for you into English or any other language,” says Slobodchikoff. The result, he explains, may be something like “‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I need to go outside to pee’ or ‘I want to go for a walk.’”
To train the AI system, Slobodchikoff planned to get data directly from pet dogs, but for some reason, he hasn’t yet restarted the project to date, but hopes to soon.
Search an app store for a pet translator and you’ll find plenty. Some are completely unscientific and silly. MeowTalk, however, is a cat-translation app based on an AI model. In 2021, its creators reported that the AI model achieved 90 percent accuracy at identifying nine different emotional states in meows. These included angry, happy, hunting, pain and rest. The app picks conversational phrases based on these emotions, like “nice to see you,” or “let me rest.”
People who have tried the app say it doesn’t always work well. But better translations of barks and meows may be just around the corner.
1. What might the man do to calm the dog?| A．Tower over the pet dog. | B．Follow the dog to the corner. |
| C．Give the dog delicious food. | D．Speak in a high-pitched voice. |
| A．To analyze data. | B．To train a dog. |
| C．To record a dog’s behavior. | D．To collect data from a dog. |
| A．It can communicate with cats. | B．It can judge cats’ state of mood. |
| C．It can store 90 conversational phrases. | D．It can be used to track pet cats. |
| A．A biologist’s puzzle. | B．Slobodchikoff’s achievements. |
| C．Trials of animal translator technology. | D．The invention of Slobodchikoff. |
7 . Research has showed physical activities are very important for students. So many schools are now encouraging students to take part in any form of healthy exercise.
Physical education is an important part of healthy living for people of all age groups, especially for the students. This is because school life is full of stress.
Besides that, in today’s world, many school children eat unhealthy foods. These may include soft drinks, pizzas and burgers. Eating these foods can make school children gain weight.
Physical education at school helps prevent school children from putting on weight. Physical exercise and activities will help them burn off more calories (卡路里). If these calories are not burned off, they will be stored as fat.
At the same time, such activities play an important role in the growth and development of the bones (骨骼). Exercise such as jumping is especially important for school children.
A physically active student will also have a healthy heart. Research shows that kids who perform aerobic (有氧的) exercise, two to three times a week for at least twenty minutes, have a healthier heart compared with those who don’t take part in physical exercise. Some kinds of the healthy aerobic exercise are playing basketball, playing soccer and so on.
1. What are many schools encouraging their students to do?| A．Study hard and get good grades. |
| B．Join in different kinds of sports games. |
| C．Take part in any form of healthy exercise. |
| D．Take part in different kinds of after-school activities. |
| A．Prevent | B．Discuss | C．Lose | D．Increase |
| A．It’s not easy for students to receive physical education. |
| B．Physical activities are good for students in many ways. |
| C．Those who don’t take part in physical exercise can’t keep fit. |
| D．Students should have more time to receive knowledge and education. |
| A．Healthy living habits |
| B．Students’ school life |
| C．Exercise more to keep healthy |
| D．Different kinds of aerobic exercise |
8 . Hang your tongue out of your mouth while your eyes look upwards. Breathe loudly and use your hands to pull your head in every way. This is yoga(瑜伽) for your face.
Fumiko Takatsu, creator of the Face Yoga Method, has written six books on face yoga and has been practicing facial exercises for about 15 years. Takatsu, 50, said she came up with the idea of facial exercises after a car accident when she was 35 years old, which left her face out of its proper position. Around the same time, Takatsu said she began to notice signs of aging, but gave up using creams and beauty treatments after they became too expensive.
Koko Hayashi, 39, a face yoga instructor in Los Angeles, said she first heard of face yoga by discovering Takatsu’s work. Hayashi said she had a chin implant(下巴植入体) when she was 27 years old, but took it out because it misshaped her face. ”That’s why I’m so interested in more natural beauty instead of plastic surgery(整形手术) ,” Hayashi said. Like others who practice facial exercises, Hayashi believes it can fix signs of aging and help reduce wrinkles(皱纹).
The question that often pops up when someone mentions face yoga is, “Does it actually work?” A study out of Northwestern University found that the exercises may help middle-aged women.
“This is a pilot study that suggests that there might be some factors of face exercise that can be helpful to at least certain patients in improving certain signs of aging,” said Dr. Murad Alam from Northwestern University. “But we need more studies to better understand exactly how much exercise is necessary to have any benefit, whether it works for men and women of different ages, and then how much exercise is needed to keep that benefit.”
Medical reporter Dr. Jennifer Ashton said that she is not sure whether face yoga works and that any benefits are most likely going to be up to the person trying it. “If you feel better after trying face yoga, it may be something you should keep doing,” she said.
1. What made Takatsu decide to create the Face Yoga Method?| A．An unexpected car accident. | B．Great interest in doing yoga. |
| C．Unaffordable beauty treatments. | D．Unsatisfactory effects of creams. |
| A．She wrote a book about face yoga. |
| B．She experienced a failed plastic surgery. |
| C．She had always admired natural beauty. |
| D．She has practiced facial exercises since she was 27. |
| A．Face yoga is helpful but more research is needed. |
| B．Face yoga is more suitable for women than men. |
| C．Face yoga needs much too exercise to bring benefits. |
| D．Face yoga should be widely taken by more people. |
| A．Its key point is keeping exercising. |
| B．It can stop all kinds of signs of aging. |
| C．Its advantages do more than its disadvantages. |
| D．Its effectiveness depends on personal feelings. |
9 . The photographs that Scilla took as a 16-year-old girl on the streets of London in 1955 stayed largely in her album over the years. Scilla is now 83, and her self-developed black-and-white photos have been brought back to life after they were discovered by a teenage photographer.
Over the past year, Philip Loveday, 16, has been revisiting his grandmother’s path across the capital to carefully rephotograph the pictures. His journey through time with a camera has been especially moving, because his grandmother, Scilla, has Alzheimer’s disease (阿尔茨海默症) and has lost many of her memories.
Philip took new photos that looked like the ones Scilla took long ago, and put them in a new album. Each page of Scilla’s old album was copied and put in the new one, with Philip’s new photos on the opposite pages. Philip’s mother, Catherine Loveday, said Scilla had been happy with the new album, which had “put her back in her shoes” as a teenager.
Philip said his mother showed him the album she had found at her mother’s house. Greatly absorbed in how modern London would compare to the city photographed by his grandmother, Philip and his mother began to make trips into central London. During the trips, they had the idea of retaking the photos.
Some of the places are similar, like Big Ben. Others show how the city has modernized. Unlike Scilla’s view of St. Paul’s Cathedral from the Thames, Philip’s retake has the Millenium Bridge. When Scilla photographed the John Lewis store on Oxford Street, it was a one-storey building—now it has seven floors. Philip had to use his imagination to recreate other sights. Scilla has repeatedly returned to her new album since receiving it. Philip said: ”It’s nice for her to see someone taking an interest in those photos and going back over them, and also good for her to connect her past to where are now.“
1. What did Philip do for Scilla during the past year?| A．He taught her how to use a camera. | B．He took her to visit London streets. |
| C．He found a new way to treat her disease. | D．He recreated photos of London she had taken. |
| A．It inspired her to take photos. | B．It made her think of her teenage days. |
| C．It encouraged her to travel across London. | D．It raised her confidence to fight off illness |
| A．Troubled. | B．Interested. | C．Experienced. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．A teenager sensed the great changes of London. |
| B．An old lady suffered a lot from Alzheimer’s disease. |
| C．A teenager and his mother travelled to London for fun. |
| D．Retaken photos awakened old memories. |
10 . A 36-year-old man is attempting to set a new record by rowing 5,000 miles solo from Hawaii to Australia while dedicating his journey to saving the planet.
Tez Steinberg, of Boulder, Colorado, plans to leave Hawaii on December 20 on his solo trip across the Pacific Ocean. Actually, it’s the second leg of an adventure that began in 2020 when he rowed solo for 71 days from Monterey, California, to Oahu, Hawaii.
Steinberg began to experience depression while he was in college. At the time, he found a solution by participating in endurance sports. “It helped me feel better,” he said. “But as I went farther and farther, pushing myself through marathons and triathlons, I discovered this belief in myself that I’m so much stronger than I thought I was.”
However, in 2016, his life took a big turn after the sudden death of his dad. The blow caused him to challenge himself even more by solo rowing across an ocean. After successfully completing the task without any prior professional experience, Steinberg realized he could use his story to inspire other people to believe in themselves and their potential to change and grow.
Recalling the first journey at sea, he said, “I was so surprised by how beautiful the ocean was, and also how much plastic I saw. So it was that realization at sea that led me to want to go back out again.” Inspired by his first expedition, Steinberg’s new mission is to focus on ocean conservation, and specifically ocean plastics. “All the plastic I saw at sea was just heartbreaking,” he said.
The upcoming voyage will be part of an attempt to break a Guinness World Record. Nevertheless, breaking records isn’t his priority. “Personally, although a world record is exciting, that’s not why I’m in it. The world record is fun for media attention, but through it we can get more donations, support and action for ocean plastics,” Steinberg said.
1. What can we learn about Steinberg from paragraphs 3 and 4?| A．He suffered academically. |
| B．He was expert in extreme sports. |
| C．He gained confidence from motivating others. |
| D．He turned to challenging tasks in face of difficulties. |
| A．To recover from the state of depression. |
| B．To relieve the pain of his father’s passing. |
| C．To inspire other people to fulfil their dreams. |
| D．To challenge himself to achieve the impossible. |
| A．To break a world record. | B．To establish a good reputation. |
| C．To contribute to ocean protection. | D．To urge governments to take action. |
| A．Stubborn and ambitious. | B．Self-centered and sympathetic. |
| C．Determined and knowledgeable. | D．Responsible and courageous. |
