1 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Are You Ready to Hug a Robot?

Getting hugged tends to be a powerful positive emotional experience. Hugs have been shown to enhance social bonding and emotional well-being. However, not everyone can get a hug     1     they need one. Some people are lonely and do not have anyone to hug them. Others may be in long-distance relationships     2     it is not easy to get physical affection from their partner. In this case, they     3     receive fewer hugs than they like.

How can this problem be solved?     4     scientists have proposed is to develop hug robots. This could offer lonely people the positive effects of getting hugged without the need     5    (seek) a person who could hug them. Nevertheless, designing a hug robot is not an easy task. For example, if the robot is very large and made mostly of metal, people might be frightened of it,     6     happily hugging it. Therefore, psychological research is needed.

A new study, which     7    (publish) in International Journal recently, focuses on the development of Moffuly-II, a newly developed hug robot, which can move its arms to perform different small gestures during the hug. When two people hug, they often do specific things with their hands, such as clapping the     8    (hug)person on the back to signal sympathy. It is important that a hug robot can perform similar gestures, too. In the study, the scientists wanted to know whether these gestures would make a robot hug     9    (appealing). Volunteers who Moffully-Il hugged generally preferred hugs with gestures to gesture-less hugs. They felt that the robot was more friendly when    10    (perform) gestures.

The findings of the study indicate that it is possible to design a robot that people enjoy to hug. Details matter here, as the intra-hug gestures played a significant role in determining how much the human volunteers enjoyed the hug.

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fit s each blank.

The History of Snacks

Hamburgers, sandwiches and pizza are some of the worlds’ favourite snacks, but have you ever wondered     1     first ate them? Read on to find out more.

The hamburger

The hamburger started life as small pieces of raw beef     2    (eat) by the Tartars, a tribe who invaded Europe in the Middle Ages.     3     they ate it, they used to put the meat on their horse under the saddle (马鞍) they were sitting on in order to make it soft. When the Tartar s arrived in Hamburg, the people mixed the beef with local spices, fried it and called it the Hamburg Steak. Germans who came to the USA took this recipe with them and it became known     4     a hamburger there.

The sandwich

People say that it was John Montague, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich,     5    invented the sandwich. Montague enjoyed playing cards in his favourite restaurant, the Beef Steak Club in London. He could     6    (find) there most days and some of his games lasted for hours. One day, instead of stopping     7    (eat) lunch, Montague asked a servant to bring him some meat between two slices of bread to prevent the cards from getting dirty. When the other players saw this, they began to order’ the same as Sandwich’, and so the sandwich got its name.

Pizza Margherita

In 1889, Queen Margherita of Italy invited chef Rafaelle Esposito from his pizzaria to visit the royal palace and     8    (bake) a selection of pizzas for her.     9    (want) to impress the queen, Rafaelle made a very special pizza. It was large and topped with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and fresh herbs to represent the Italian flag,       10     is red, white and green. The Queen was delighted with this design and the pizza became one of her favourite foods. When people heard about this, they all wanted to try it and so the pizza Margherita was born.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word, for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Finding safe places to interact

“Why are young people staying away from their relatives?” Recently, this question     1     (cause) a heated discussion online. In fact, young people are not “giving up” their blood ties, but turning their focus to online socializing. According to a report     2     was released by a social app in May, about 60 percent of young people have no more than two close friends. For them, social apps have become the main way     3     (make) their circle bigger.

Many people believe     4     this change partly comes from the need for a lot of moves in modern times. Long-distance migration (移居) is now common across the country. Because of moving with their families, young people are unable to keep in touch with their relatives, and they become     5     (active) online.

Moreover, online socializing     6     (favor) by many people because it provides a more personal feeling. For those     7     are uneasy with real-life socializing, doing it online allows them to escape from “embarrassing” social scenes. With different social apps. making friends can be satisfied in a comfortable way. “As a shy person, I prefer non-face-to-face talks on social apps     8     I don’t have to worry about the things that make me unconfident,” said 18-year-old Wu Ruilin from Ya’an, Sichuan province. Through apps like Soul, Bilibili, and Zhihu, young people     9     find someone with similar interests. “have some close friends in music and programming circles.     10     (communicate) with them online always offers me a more relaxing atmosphere to explore these interests,” said Wu.

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The First Space Cat

In a few weeks, space scientists will celebrate a remarkable event — the 60th anniversary of the launch of the first cat into space, an astronautical success that has never been repeated.

In the early 60s, dogs and monkeys were the animals usually used by scientists to find out exactly     1    dangerous the conditions were in outer space. And they were also used to assess if humans     2     survive trips beyond the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.

A total of 14 street cats     3     (gather) at France’s space agency for selection as cat astronauts, but the cats were not given names on purpose in order to prevent scientists from becoming too fond of them. The cat selected to travel to space was simply known     4    C341. C341 flew on a French rocket in October 1963, taking it to a place     5    no cat had gone before.

Then,     6    the news of its flight was announced on 18 October 1963, the French press decided this cat had to have its name. They picked “Felix” after a cartoon cat character, only     7     (discover) that C341 was female, so her name was then adjusted to “Felicette” as a result. In putting Felicette in one of its rockets, France added a new species to the list of animals that scientists     8     (send) into space before. Previously, two garden spiders, Anita and Arebella, had been taken to the Skylab     9    (orbit) around the moon.

“In the 60s,     10    (concern) about the possible danger for a human to be in outer space, scientists and engineers primarily undertook animal space flights to see if they suffered or their lives were threatened by the weightlessness or increased radiation or other effects they might experience up there,” said astronomer Jake Foster at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. “The fact that they did not fail paved the way for humans to begin journeys into space.”

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Are exclamation marks necessary?!

Punctuation is so important in writing that it is one of the first things you learn in school. It is a universal code with different marks to help with the meaning of     1     is being written. As is known to us, it     2     indicate the end of a sentence, a question or — in the exclamation mark’s case — a strong emotion. Without an exclamation mark in the correct place, a warning road sign might read, “Children please drive slowly”     3         4     “Children! Please drive slowly”.

An exclamation mark is a valid form of punctuation     5     origin can be traced back to a 14^th century Italian scholar. The exclamation mark informs the reader that there are strong feelings in the words. Although it is up to the reader     6     (grasp) exactly what that emotion is, it’s a useful signal. Also, exclamation marks on road signs help to keep people safe. As punctuation expert Philip Cowell writes, “There’s a meaningful difference between ‘duck’ and ‘duck!’” Of course, using them too much     7     (make) exclamation marks lose their purpose but that doesn’t mean they are useless.

However,     8     matters how punctuation is used. Some writers argue that exclamation marks are never truly necessary. Famous author Terry Pratchett writes that someone who uses multiple exclamation marks is likely to wear “underpants on his head”. Perhaps this is because they seem shouty and forced,     9     (give) away a writer’s need to tell the reader how to read a sentence. It’s       10     (good) to leave them out and let the reader react to the words on their own terms. A good writer can create emotions with just words and sentences,     11     that’s fear, wonder or joy. Exclamation marks make the writer seem desperate and can be tiring to read. One writer described them as “the cockroach of the punctuation world”, meaning they are everywhere, and they are pests.

9 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Italian astronaut shows beauty of ancient Chinese composition in space

Besides “Wow” and “Great,” what else would you say    1     flying over the Earth in space? Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian female astronaut in space, posted several lines of a famous ancient Chinese composition on Twitter     2     (share) her joy.

She first wrote in Chinese, and then attached an accurate translation of the lines in both Italian and English     3     more people could understand the Chinese composition. She also attached three photos taken in space of China’s Bohai Bay and the day-night view of Beijing, the country’s capital.

    4     the first Italian female astronaut in space, Cristoforetti carried out her first space mission on Nov. 23, 2014. She started the second mission in April and returned to Earth on Friday night after a 127-day long stay in orbit.

Cristoforetti has been active in Sino-European cooperation in the field of manned spaceflight. She was a working group member     5     (task) with keeping in touch with Chinese counterparts to define and implement cooperation in the field of astronaut operations. In 2017, she took part in a sea survival exercise organized by the Astronaut Center of China in the Yellow Sea,     6     was the first joint training of Chinese and foreign astronauts in China.

An agreement     7    (sign) in 2015 between China and Europe on cooperation in the field of manned spaceflight, specifying the participation of China and Europe in each other’s astronaut training activities.     8     (speak) clear Chinese, Cristoforetti once told the media that the teams from China and Europe     9    (work) very well together in the field of astronaut training during the joint training.

She joined the Italian Air Force in 2001 and     10     (accumulate) more than 500 hours of flight experience. In May 2009, Cristoforetti was one of the six chosen from 8,000 European applicants to join the ESA astronaut corps.