1 . In the early 1990s, Eric Domb, a highly successful lawyer, came up with the idea of building a bird park. His father-in-law ________ the idea in the beginning, but when the ________ started to make shape he backed out. Domb thus had to ________ money from former clients, his two brothers and father as well as a bank to build a zoological park known as Pairi Daiza.

After the park opened in 1994, his inexperience led to many ________, but he pushed on with his venture (冒险). By 2000, the park was turning a profit, and Domb’s ambitions were ________. The park needed more than birds, he believed, and other creatures and cultural gardens would help turn it into something ________.

Since his childhood he has been fascinated by Chinese ________. In 2006, he built the first Chinese garden, Dream of Han Wu Di in his zoo. It was said to be the largest Chinese garden in Europe. Domb kept ________ new elements. It finally took more than six years to complete the project.

Domb felt ________ by the joint panda breeding program. Domb and his people spent the following months ________ building giant panda houses with no guarantee that Pairi Daiza would be fortunate enough to ________ giant pandas. The huge enclosure built includes a pool, cave and ________ plantation.

Now, Domb is eager to tell how he ________ a pair of giant pandas, Xing Hui and Hao Hao in February 2014. The sense of ________ is all the more profound in that Pairi Daiza is one of the few private zoos outside China to ________ giant pandas.

1.

A．rejected

B．supported

C．doubted

D．raised

2.

A．project

B．rule

C．law

D．document

3.

A．steal

B．win

C．earn

D．borrow

4.

A．rewards

B．wonders

C．mistakes

D．regrets

5.

A．missing

B．spreading

C．shaking

D．growing

6.

A．extreme

B．unusual

C．irregular

D．essential

7.

A．culture

B．food

C．poetry

D．dream

8.

A．containing

B．changing

C．adding

D．removing

9.

A．embarrassed

B．surprised

C．confused

D．inspired

10.

A．willingly

B．enthusiastically

C．automatically

D．confidently

11.

A．take charge of

B．pay attention to

C．get hold of

D．gain knowledge of

12.

A．grass

B．tea

C．coffee

D．bamboo

13.

A．bought

B．protected

C．received

D．tracked

14.

A．pride

B．humor

C．security

D．duty

15.

A．hide

B．house

C．train

D．save

2 . A Guide to Write Well in Business

Of many skills accounting for the success of businessmen — vision, execution, persuasion, perseverance, grit, resilience — effective writing fails to make the list.     1     Thus, I give you the following pills of advice to improve your writing.

1. Use short, simple words.

Whoever convinced the world that fancy words make for quality writing is a white lie.     2     The Gunning Fox Index (GFI) measures the readability of your text. The output of the GFI is the age at which your reader with formal education can understand your writing. For example, the GFI of a speech by Churchill is 9.8 years, which means a fifth grader could understand it.

2. Let your verbs do the work.

Effective writing leans heavily on verbs and less so on adjectives and adverbs. Look again at this Churchill’s speech. Known for delivering harsh truths, Churchill’s choice of verbs leaves little doubt to his audience: grieve, fallen, defend fight, break, lose, fail, sink, brace, bear. Choosing those words undoubtedly required careful thought.     3    

3. Get rid of unnecessary words.

“If I have more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” This quote shows the sad fact that writing concise sentences takes time and effort.     4     Then delete them.

4.     5    

The English language is blessed and cursed with many tenses. Twelve, to be specific. I trust there are reasons for each of our twelve verb tenses, and I am confident there are talented writers who can make use of each. Just choose your tense carefully if you’re not one of them.

A．Use simple verb tenses.

B．Avoid the passive tense.

C．Time permitting, do something else.

D．Yet writing skills are essential in nearly every profession.

E．Particularly in business communications, simpler is better.

F．You should consider which parts of your writing your reader will skip.

G．If we invest time and energy in our choice of verbs, our writing will definitely improve.

3 . There is a vivid world beyond our senses that wildlife knows in ways human cannot. A hummingbird sees colors that humans can only imagine. Elephants call to each other in bass rumbles too deep for human hearing, Bumblebees sense the electrical field of flowers ripe for pollination, while sea turtles feel the planet’s magnetic pull.

Working on the top of the Rocky Mountains, scientists for the first time proved that wild hummingbirds can see ultraviolet light (紫外线) invisible to humans. Researchers led by Mary Stoddard at Princeton University tested wild broad-tailed hummingbirds in their natural setting and clearly showed the birds use their ultraviolet vision to search for food.

Biologists have long known that many birds have eyes sensitive to ultraviolet light, but they did not know how it might affect their vision or their natural behavior. To find out, Dr Stoddard and her colleagues went to the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, a high-altitude breeding ground for broad-tailed hummingbirds. There the scientist set up two special feeding stations equipped with LED displays which can emit UV colors, such as ultraviolet green. One feeder, emitting a UV color, contained the sugar water that hummingbirds long for, while the other, emitting a non-UV shade of the same color, contained plain water.

During the three years of filed test, birds visited the feeders 6000 times. Once they learned the clue, their ability to distinguish UV and non-UV colors accurately guided them to the sugar water, no matter how often the researchers switched them around or changed colors. “We could see the humming birds learning there was a difference between colors that looked absolutely identical to us. And that was extremely exciting,” Dr Stoddard says.

Dr Stoddard and her colleagues then tested 3.300 examples of plumage and plants. About a third of them had displayed ultraviolet colors. In nature, color conveys more than eye appeal: Color is a clue of information ——about food, mates or predators.

1. Why are different animals mentioned in the first paragraph?

A．To compare different animal’s exceptional skills.

B．To demonstrate how vivid the world around us is.

C．To introduce some supernatural abilities of human.

D．To illustrate animals’ amazing super human senses.

2. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．Research background.	B．Theoretical base of the research.
C．Research approach.	D．Place of the research.

3. Which of the following can prove the hummingbirds can see ultraviolet light?

A．They can find food source by UV colors.	B．They can emit both UV and non-UV light.
C．They can learn the names of different colors.	D．They can distinguish sugar water and plain water.

4. What can be concluded about colors in nature?

A．Colors show animals’ eyesight.	B．Colors indicate survival messages.
C．Visible colors attract hummingbirds.	D．Ultraviolet colors provide life support.

4 . The salad dressing, butter, turkey, dog food and new toothbrush came to $24.97. Laurie handed he cashier a slice of wood marked $25, and walked out.

The wooden currency (货币) is good only in the small city of Tenino. It is part of an effort to help residents and local merchants get through the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Decades after it created a similar program during the Great Depression, the city is again giving people in need up to $300 per month in wooden currency to spend.

Nearly every business in town is accepting the wooden money. The currency is made of maple wood and printed on the same 1890s-era press that once printed the Depression currency and the local newspaper.

Businesses in town can exchange the wooden money for real dollars at City Hall or sell them on the side. Some merchants said they had been offered three times the face value from coin collectors around the country.

“The city could have given out debit cards (借记卡) or cash, but we don’t know where that money was going,” said Tyler, former president of the local department of commerce. “This is how we could keep the money here in the community.”

Tenino is a small town with round 1,800 people. In the early 1900s, it became a boom town, as its stone was in demand to help rebuild Seattle and San Francisco, following devastating fires in those two cities. Back then, there were more hotels and businesses in Tenino.

Nowadays there are no hotels and the quiet downtown is just a row of shops. “We’re a small community that relies on a lot of tourism during the summer,” said Mayor Fournier, who decided to use the wooden currency again. “Now everything’s been shut down. Our businesses, restaurants and antique stores do not have the traffic. There’s no assistance available. We are on our own.”

“When they came up with this, I was the first person in line there,” said Mahlenbrei. “I have no money. This really helps.” Maria Williams, the owner of Tenino Coffee Bistro, said, “I am really proud of my city.”

1. What can be inferred about the town Tenino?

A．Shops in it only accept wooden currency.

B．People in it are enjoying a green economy.

C．It sees a great drop in tourism this summer.

D．Wooden currency is used in it for the first time.

2. Why do the government choose wooden money to give out?

A．To ensure it really helps the local.

B．To take the place of foreign currency.

C．To show the public wealth of the city.

D．To double the face value of the money.

3. How did Mahlenbrei feel about the wooden currency?

A．It caused many shops to shut down.

B．It brought no assistance to her.

C．It made the traffic busier.

D．It met her urgent need.

4. What is the best title of the passage?

A．Creative Ideas to Print Wooden Money

B．A Wooden Town’s Fight against the Virus

C．Wooden Currency Comes Back in Hard Time

D．Wooden Money Affects People’s Purchasing Habit

5 . It’s not our fault.

It’s not our fault that we failed to earn straight A’s, make perfect College Board scores, and get into our first choice of college. It’s not our fault that we failed to earn millions of dollars in our twenties and billions by thirty-thus getting ourselves on the cover of Forbes.

It’s not our fault that our start didn’t glow white hot. However, early 21^st century society has made us feel shame exactly for that, for not exploding out of the starting blocks like an Olympic sprinter-for not blooming early. Parents, schools, employers, and the media are now crazily over celebrating early achievement as the best kind of achievement or even the only kind.

It wasn’t always so. Joanne, 55, is late bloomer. Her teenage years were unstable and unhappy. In school, Joanne earned above-average grades but hardly good enough to earn high honors and distinction. A teacher recalls Joanne as bright but not extraordinary. A quiet girl, Joanne passed through high school with few remembering her. She was rejected by her dream college but went to a fallback college instead. After graduation, Joanna worked as a secretary. Bored, she married a man she met on an outing and they had a baby girl. The marriage didn’t survive two years.

At the age of 30, Joanne saw herself at a dead end, with no job and a dependent child. She was diagnosed with depression, which prevented her from working much and earning. Strangely enough, it is this situation that took her closer to her gift. She started to write. Writing was her unique talent. In the months she depended on welfare to feed her baby, she made her name Joanne Kathleen(J.K.) Rowling known around the world with her popular Harry Potter series. And now she is a self-made billionaire who regularly appears on the Forbes.

The fact is that many of us are late bloomers of some kind. At some point, we got stuck though. Be patient, late bloomers will find their way eventually.

1. What does the underlined “that” refer to?

A．Succeeding later.

B．Exploding suddenly.

C．Blooming earlier.

D．Growing wildly.

2. Which of the following words best describe Joanna in school?

A．creative

B．ordinary

C．dependent

D．bored

3. What is the correct order of the events in Joanna’s life?
a. She was diagnosed with depression.
b. Her name appeared on the Forbes.
c. She worked as a secretary.
d. She started to write.
e. She got divorced.

A．cbdea

B．ceadb

C．eacdb

D．ebdac

4. Which statement will the author probably agree with?

A．A good start actually means half done.

B．Slow learners will achieve success if pushed.

C．Children develop and adapt at different paces.

D．Writing is effective in inspiring depressing hearts.

6 . THE EARTH DAY: Thursday April 22^nd 2:30 to 5:30

1. What will the participants do?

A．Compete in a quiz about plants.	B．Assist the gardeners to plant trees.
C．Hunt animals in the botanical garden.	D．Play a game with the help of some clues.

2. How much does each participant need to pay at least?

A．$15

B．$20

C．$40

D．$60

3. Which of the following can be used to cook?

A．Vanilla Orchid and Angel’s Trumpet.	B．Angel’s Trumpet and Voodoo Lily.
C．Voodoo Lily and Lemon Grass.	D．Lemon Grass and Vanilla Orchid