1 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. stems     B. insecure       C. squeezed     D. individual       E. glued     F. spreading G. head     H. simply        I. distracting        J. spacious     K. originally

You’ll Often Walk Alone

There has been a quiet pandemic (流行病) developing while most people’s attention has been on Covid-19. The lockdown has worsened a problem that has been     1     in many developed nations for decades: loneliness.

Part of the problem     2     from contemporary employment. Globally, two in five office workers feel lonely at work. This rises to three in five in Britain. Gig-economy (零工经济) jobs can leave people with     3     incomes and without the companionship of colleagues. The pandemic has made it more difficult to make, and maintain, friendships, particularly for new employees. Even before the crisis, the hope that     4     offices would encourage greater camaraderie (友情) proved to be false. Many people find the chatter     5     and withdraw with noise-canceling headphones. They then email colleagues who are sitting only a few desks away.

Perhaps loneliness relates to human history. Mass urbanization is a relatively recent development; if the history of human existence was     6     into a single day, the Industrial Revolution did not occur until almost midnight. For much of that time, humans lived in small groups of hunter-gatherers; cities may just overwhelm the senses. Ms. Hertz points her finger at a recent development: social media. The internet has led too much cyber-bullying (although it has also been a source of companionship during the lockdown). And people     7     to their smart phones spend less time interacting socially.

Some changes in behavior are owing to     8     choice. Before the pandemic no one was stopping people going to church or taking part in sports. They     9     preferred to do other things. Indeed, one reason for the decline in communal activities is that men choose to be with their families rather than     10     to the bar; American fathers spend three times as much time with their children as they did in the 1960s. That is surely a welcome development. So recreating a communal society may be difficult.

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct.

Teaching in Front of a Camera

Wageningen University is keen on developing forms of education that reach people all over the world. The basics of the course topics are covered in short films and three-minute to seven-minute presentations     1     (use) techniques such as animation and voice-over(画外音).

“The online Master’s programmes are quite different from the large scale MOOCs(在线课程),” explains Busstra. In the Master’s courses, the short “knowledge clips” dealing with the essential topics     2     (link) to an assignment directly to help the students actively absorb the knowledge themselves. Teachers can also use them to test     3     the material has come across well. Busstra says, “The teacher has to think up new ways of working - getting students to make a film clip, for instance,     4     they present a research setup they have have thought up themselves, or to respond to someone else’s idea, or to work on a document in groups.” The students also get the chance to post a question while they     5     (watch) an online film - equivalent of putting your hand up during a lecture. Fellow students and teachers can then answer     6     question online. “There are a lot of misunderstandings about online education,” says Busstra, “one of them being     7     there is only one-way communication. But people are gradually gaining confidence in it. It will stay typically Wageningen: small-scale and     8     (base) on interaction and group work.”

The investment     9     online learning is paying off in the regular education programme too, according to Busstra. Students in Wageningen can pick up the basics at home through the knowledge clips. During lectures, teachers     10     then provide more in-depth analysis, talk about their own work and supervise students more personally. “Increasingly, on-campus and online education will no longer be two separate worlds.” expects Busstra.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct.
Hi, everyone.

Traditionally,     1     the year winds down, it’s a time for reflections—to give thanks, reconnect with loved ones, and cherish the more meaningful parts of life, removed from our usual day-to-day distractions.

Of course, the events of 2020 haven’t shown a lot of respect for our traditions. In a year of so much tragedy, it can be tough to give thanks when you’re doing your best to get by. And far too many of us will have to gather around a table with an empty chair, if we were able to gather together at all.

One thing, though, we can say about 2020 is that it forced us all to cherish what is most important, what’s most meaningful in our lives. To stop taking things for granted,     2     truly matters. To be grateful for what we have, and to be alive to the pain of those     3     (fortunate).

Throughout this challenging year, I’ve been moved, again and again, by the sacrifices so many were willing to make on behalf of others. The healthcare professionals who risked their lives to save ours. The workers who have kept our lights on and our shelves stocked, always essential to our economy, but finally     4     (recognize) for it. The protesters of every race and age who saw injustice in their streets and their institutions and demanded change. And the less heralded leaders, the quiet change-makers who saw need in their own communities and leapt to address it. They checked in on their neighbors, delivered food and PPE to seniors and those experiencing hardship, offered mental health support to those     5    (recover) from trauma.     6     holes this pandemic tore wide in our social fabric, these emerging leaders stepped forward to patch it up.

These are exactly the leaders Michelle and I started our Foundation to support. We always thought they     7     (lead) us into a bright future, if only we     8     empower them, connect them with each other, and give them a dose of inspiration when they needed it.

What we learned in 2020 is that these emerging leaders aren’t just building a brighter future, they’re safeguarding our present. In hard times, they are the ones who’ve given me solace. It’s     9     sacrifice in which I found hope. And as we begin to close the chapter on a difficult year with encouraging news on the horizon, it’s their leadership     10     will guide us today and tomorrow.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everybody.

—Quoted from Barack Obama’s Christmas speech in 2020

4 . 火遍大江南北的各直播(live streaming) 平台将众多用户们打造成了“分享达人”，他们在不侵犯他人隐私的情况下分享自己的所见所闻，形成了独特的网络文化现象。(who) （汉译英）

5 . 主席感谢了全体员工在选举过程中的陪伴。(accompany) （汉译英）

6 . 当谈到冷冻食物，我有不同观点。(When) （汉译英）

7 . 人类的幸福之道在于追求与环境的和谐统一，而不是试图支配和破坏自然。（instead of）（汉译英）

8 . Transition. It’s a pleasant word and a calming concept. It means going surely and sweetly from somewhere present to somewhere future. Unless, that is, it is newspapers’ ‘transition’ to the _______ world, an uncertain and highly uncomfortable process.

Just look at the latest print circulation figures. The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and many of the rest are down overall between 8% and 10% year-on-year, but their websites go ever higher.

All of that may well be true, depending on timing, geography and more. _______, everyone— from web academics to print analysis—says so. Yet pause for a while and count a few little things that don’t _______.

One is the magazine world, both in the UK and in the US. It ought to be _______, wrecked by the move to the tablets which fit existing magazine page sizes so perfectly. But, in fact, the rate of decline in magazine purchasing is relatively small, with subscriptions holding up strongly and advertising remarkable _______.

As for news and current affairs magazines — which you’d expect to find in the eye of the digital storm — they had a 8.4% increase to report. In short, on both sides of the Atlantic, although some magazine areas went down, many showed rapid growth.

You can discover a _______ phenomenon when it comes to books, Kindle and similar e-readers are booming, with sales up massively this year. The apparent first step of transition couldn’t be _______. Yet, when booksellers examined the value of the physical books they sold over the last six months, they found it just 0.4% down. Screen or paper, then? It wasn’t one or the other: it was _______.

So if sales in that area have fallen so little, perhaps the _______ mostly affects newspapers? Yet again, though, the messages are oddly ________. The latest survey of trends by the World Association of Newspapers shows that global circulation rose 1.1% last year (to 812 million copies a day). Sales in the West dropped back but Asia more than ________ the difference.

Already 360 US papers—including most of the biggest and best — have built paywalls around their products. However, the best way of attracting a paying readership appears to be a deal that offers the print copy and digital access as some kind of ________ package.

________, print is also a crucial tool in selling internet subscriptions. And its advertising rates raise between nine and ten times more money than online.

Of course this huge difference isn’t ________ news for newspaper companies, as maintaining both an active website and an active print edition is difficult, complex and expensive. But newspaper brands still have much of their high profile in print: a drift on the web, the job of just being ________ becomes far harder.

1.

A．publishing

B．online

C．ideal

D．unknown

2.

A．On the other hand

B．After all

C．To begin with

D．For instance

3.

A．stop

B．exist

C．emerge

D．fit

4.

A．regulated

B．advancing

C．collapsing

D．minimized

5.

A．solid

B．simple

C．creative

D．changeable

6.

A．cultural

B．common

C．scientific

D．similar

7.

A．later

B．harder

C．clearer

D．slower

8.

A．all

B．neither

C．both

D．either

9.

A．service

B．system

C．crisis

D．figure

10.

A．right

B．vague

C．designed

D．mixed

11.

A．made up

B．told apart

C．took over

D．held on

12.

A．joint

B．mysterious

C．modern

D．complex

13.

A．In other words

B．On the contrary

C．What’s more

D．Even so

14.

A．new

B．sad

C．big

D．good

15.

A．spared

B．updated

C．noticed

D．edited

9 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. valuable     B. unrecognizable     C. unconsciously     D. reserved     E. heavily F. encounters   G. disrupted     H. confused   I. closeness   J. bunch   K. recomposed

Relationship in the Digital Age

People from our past whom we no longer directly communicate with but who are active on social networks can “occupy     1     space in your mind, and you think about them instead of about your close friends,” said Carlin Flora, the author of “Friend-fluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We are.”

“If my high school friend posts frequently about her life, it’s almost like it’s celebrity gossip, or it seems as if I am watching a reality show about her,” Ms. Flora said. “Our brains get     2     about whether we know celebrities; if we see someone a lot, our brain thinks we know them.”

Ms. Schiller, the Iowa graduate, goes out often with friends at night but also lives on a digital diet of texting     3     enough that she recently hurt her thumb, Google chat and social media. As with many young people, talking on the phone was never a big part of her routine and is now     4     for the rarest of occasions.

There are physiological benefits to face-to-face     5     however, that doesn’t belong to digital interactions or the phone. “Your blood pressure goes down, and you imitate your friends gesture     6    .” Ms. Flora said. “It’s a kind of harmony humans have developed over thousands of years, and you don’t get that when you only follow someone on social media.”

But now it’s common for the synchrony(同步性)to be     7     in person, thanks to smartphones. Imagine Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting “Nighthawks” (below)     8     today, with the three late-night diners and counterman all gazing at screens. “If there’s a(n)     9     of guys at a bar together and they’re all on their phones,” Ms. Flora said, “they’re not doing much to stimulate the body system to create the sense of     10    .”

10 . So cautious was he in their first trans-Antarctic expedition that he was the first ________ (spot) the danger caused by the tip of that floating iceberg. (所给词的适当形式填空)