With a wide smile on her face, 15-year-old Sirin eagerly rushed to her mom to show off her new painting. But Mom raised her eyebrows with eyes wide open, and spoke impatiently, “No time, baby. Right now I am busy with an important talk. Just wait for some time, OK?”
Holding her oil painting, she frowned (皱眉),and then searched for her dad. “Dad, see what I have done,” Sirin exclaimed cheerfully. Her dad turned around while adjusting his tie, grinned at her, and showed his thumbs up!
Immediately, Sirin replied angrily, “Dad, you haven’t seen it yet.”
He smiled at her saying, “No time, baby. I will see it later.” He just patted her back lovingly, kissed her forehead, and rushed for his office.
She was not a kid to be pleased with simple gesture or smile. She stood there for a few seconds, and then stormed off to her own bedroom. Hot air was blowing from her nostrils (鼻孔) ; her face turned into apple red. She threw the painting on the table, slammed the door and threw herself on her bed.
“Why is everybody so busy?” She recalled thousands of incidents that hurt her in preschool, middle school and even in high school too! She assumed at least her own family members would give some values to her thoughts, but they were no exception. Unconsciously, her eyes were filled with tears.
The knocking sound on the door put a sudden stop to her thought. Her mom was calling her for dinner. Sirin deliberately (故意地) came late to join them. She kept silent and didn’t look at anyone, scratching the table mat with her nail. Her mom was puzzled at the unusual behavior. Suddenly the morning incident came to mind. Softly, she asked, “ Honey, did I do anything wrong? ”
注意：1.所续写短文的词数应为150左右；2.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好。
At this very moment, Sirin could no longer resist her anger.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When back from school the next day, Sirin was surprised to see her beautifully-decorated paining on the wall.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“Marilyn, you have so much determination and so much heart. If you work at it you’ll be a fine swimmer,” Gus Ryder said to me after I finished a one-mile race in the freezing cold Lake Ontario.
I believed him and started swimming for Gus. Every day, we trained for hours in open water. But no matter how hard I worked, I still came in third or fourth. Four years later, it was clear that I was never going to the Olympics. That’s when Gus suggested I challenge the famous American long-distance swimmer Florence Chadwick to swim the thirty-two miles across Lake Ontario from New York to Toronto.
The idea had never occurred to me, but Gus had made up his mind. “I wasn’t sure Florence could make it. If we could swim one stroke further than her, it would be worth it,” Gus encouraged me.
Eventually, I decided to do it for Gus, and for myself.
The race started at 10 pm on September 6. It was cloudy, windy, and very dark. When I looked around, I couldn’t see where the lake ended and the sky began.
“Marilyn, just follow my light and I will guide you across this lake,” said Gus, who had a big flashlight and shone it just ahead of me from the lifeboat.
Florence swam for about four hours before she quit. But it wasn’t until several hours later, when I was having difficulty, that Gus told me that Florence was out and that I was the only one left!
I felt very encouraged. But it was such a long night that Gus had to do his best to keep me going. At the dawn, he even began writing messages on a chalkboard to keep my thoughts positive. Once he wrote, “You know you can do it. You can do it for me!” Another time he even wrote, “If you give up, I give up.”
By midday I felt so tired that I started falling asleep. So Gus started swimming with me to get my attention back. “I’m here to swim with you, Marilyn. Come on!” he said.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
At the very moment, I began to experience a very unusual feeling.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
After twenty-one hours in the water, we began approaching the shore.
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3 . I’ve been working hard with my children on recognizing when someone does something nice for us. He doesn’t have to do something super
Recently we were in a small shopping center and stopped for a (n)
It wasn’t a big gesture. However, it made my heart swell (充满) with
| A．annoying | B．touching | C．general | D．secret |
| A．ignore | B．build | C．cross | D．close |
| A．need | B．show | C．refuse | D．fear |
| A．in trouble | B．in common | C．in peace | D．in return |
| A．slow | B．quick | C．extra | D．safe |
| A．gifts | B．food | C．drinks | D．surprise |
| A．admit | B．breathe | C．prove | D．wait |
| A．buy | B．earn | C．open | D．book |
| A．no | B．sorry | C．yes | D．thanks |
| A．sign | B．smile | C．note | D．line |
| A．politely | B．rudely | C．suddenly | D．hardly |
| A．recorded | B．recalled | C．guessed | D．asked |
| A．pride | B．shyness | C．worry | D．hesitation |
| A．longer | B．easier | C．faster | D．sadder |
| A．approach | B．comment | C．effort | D．reward |
1.询问近况；
2.告知你的英语学习情况；
3.表达祝愿。
注意：
1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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Nepal has doubled
In 2009, Nepal had a wild tiger population of around 121 individuals and their numbers were decreasing. The future of this species was
Nepal played a leadership role
Growing tiger numbers increases the challenges of coexistence between people and tigers. To help reduce the impact, government compensation (补偿) package has been put in place
6 . As a qualified teacher of art and design, Theresa Harwood offers short online courses on drawing and painting to help students both young and old develop into confident artists.
Academic drawing course
This course is for absolute beginners of any age who are not sure on what to do or how to use a pencil. The course will be limited to only six participants, 5 sessions, once a week.
Start date: June 5
Time:10:00 am～11:00 am
Price: $380
Water color painting course
This course is for anyone who is interested in developing skills for water colour painting. Through a series of 6 projects we learn wet on wet and wet on dry. The course will be limited to only twelve participants. 6 sessions, once a week.
Start date: April 23
Time:4:30 pm～5:30 pm
Price: $380
Landscape drawing course
This course is suitable for anyone from 11 to 90 years who are interested in developing skills for landscape drawing. The only requirement of the course is that you want to learn to draw! The course will be limited to only ten participants. 5 sessions, once a week.
Start date: May 24
Time:8:00 pm～9:00 pm
Price: $380
Western art history course
This course is for students, aged between 9 and 12 years. It looks at the fun facts of the key artworks of each art movement and explains why the artists painted certain views or people. The course will be limited to only eight participants. 6 sessions, once a week.
Start date: May 7
Time:10:30 am～11:30 am
Price: $380
These courses have limited spaces and are often sold out quickly, so do book your spot soon!
1. How many students are admitted for each academic drawing course?| A．6. | B．8. | C．10. | D．12. |
| A．On April 23. | B．On May 7. | C．On May 24. | D．On June 5. |
| A．Water color painting. | B．Western art history. |
| C．Landscape drawing. | D．Academic drawing. |
7 . Drinking enough water is important, but kids don’t seem to feel attracted to drinking enough water. Hopefully, this list of healthy drinks for your kids offers tasty solutions now!
Fresh Lemonade
Lemonade is widely popular among kids all over the world.
People make the sweet as well as the sour (酸的) lemonade. The lemon brings the sour taste, while sugar and salt decide the sweetness and sourness of the drink.
The drink is served cold with ice. It is important to remove seeds (籽) from the lemon juice before adding it to the water-sugar mixture.
Banana Shake
It is the most common one introduced to kids at an early age. This is due to the ease of eating bananas.
Banana contains a lot of nutrients (营养物) and provides natural sweetness to drinks. You can cut small pieces of one banana and include sugar and milk to prepare the shake.
Coconut Water
If you are specifically looking for a choice in water, coconut water is the perfect healthy drink for your kids. Coconut water contains a high content of nutrients. It also delivers a certain amount of sugar and protein.
You can find fresh coconut water in the market. If possible, get the fresh coconut water instead of the packaged one.
Ginger Tea
Ginger tea is helpful in protecting from common cold and flu.
You will need a small ginger piece and mix it with warm water. Add lemonade and honey to make it sweet and sour at the same time.
This tea can be served warm in winter. You can also make it a cold tea by serving with ice in summer.
1. What does the author advise people to do about making lemon juice?| A．Add much water. | B．Cut a lemon into pieces. |
| C．Get packaged lemons. | D．Take away lemon seeds. |
| A．Ginger Tea. | B．Banana Shake. |
| C．Coconut Water. | D．Fresh Lemonade. |
| A．Parents. | B．Teenagers. | C．businessmen. | D．Children. |
8 . Be it sugar or social media, the response in our brain is the same: It produces a “feel-good” chemical called dopamine. It first brings about pleasure, but it doesn’t last very long. It is then followed by pain so that we have to search for the pleasurable things again.
“This cycle of pleasure and pain made sense in the time of early humans when we had to constantly search for our basic needs-food, water, shelter,” says Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford Medical School researcher. “But our brains weren’t adjusted to put out the ‘fire of dopamine’ caused by pleasurable things that are so easily available in modern life.”
In addition, when we’re repeatedly exposed to pleasure-producing things, we’re not able to take joy in the same rewards. Instead, we need stronger and stronger stimulus (刺激) just to feel good. Otherwise, the cycle will lead us to anxiety, depression and many other problems.
“This is a universal problem—not one limited to those struggling with the disease of addiction. If we want to stay mentally healthy, we must rethink how to break the cycle in a dopamine-overloaded world,” says Lembke.
Her suggestions for the addicts?
Take a 30-day break from anything that we rely on for pleasure. This doesn’t mean going cold turkey forever. But this first month is key to breaking the pleasure-pain cycle and it’s a lot easier to cut out an addictive behavior entirely at first. Then re-introduce the pleasurable things little by little, like just a few bites of ice cream at a time or just one hour online a night.
Another strategy is to create physical distance between us and our addiction. That could mean just removing the addictive thing from our personal space. For someone who’s addicted to video games, that could mean a separate laptop for work and one for play.
“In a time of abundance, we have to strike a pleasure-pain balance, which means intentionally avoiding pleasure and seeking the kind of purposeful pain that keeps us healthy, such as exercise,” Lembke says. “By doing so, we will reset reward pathways and eventually be a lot happier. It’s not easy, but it’s well worth doing in the long term.”
1. What can we learn about dopamine from the text?| A．It has always been harmful to humans. |
| B．It gives us less joy for the same rewards. |
| C．It can be caused by anything available. |
| D．It can lead to a lasting good feeling. |
| A．Abandoning. | B．Waiting. | C．Cooking. | D．Repeating. |
| A．Avoid pleasure in life. |
| B．Set a strict limit on pleasurable things. |
| C．Change reward pathways. |
| D．Expose ourselves to repeated rewards. |
| A．Ways to Live With Dopamine in Peace |
| B．Tips on Getting Rid of Social Media Addiction |
| C．Strategies for Making Most of the Modern Life |
| D．The Need to Strike a Pleasure-pain Balance |
9 . Humans have long been trying to make sense of our place in the universe. Waiting at a launch site in French Guiana? NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the latest step forward in that ancient quest (探索).
Using telescopes, astronomers have seen many galaxies (星系) such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the NGC 3227 Galaxy. So far, the most distant galaxy ever discovered, GN-z11, was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. To the untrained eye, it looks like a red blob (小点点), but it’s basically like looking back in time about 13.4 billion years ago. That’s just about 0.4 billion years after the Big Bang.
“Hubble is limited in how far back in time it can look, so finding this one was just a lucky break,” says Marusa Bradac, an astronomer at the University of California. “Astronomers only spotted it because decades of using Hubble have let them cover much of the sky, and this particular early galaxy is surprisingly bright although it is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy and has just one percent of its mass.”
Already, with that one galaxy, we’ve started to question some of our assumptions about how galaxies grow. The powerful, $ 10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has technology that should let it see back to 0.1 ~0.2 billion years after the Big Bang, the period when the very first galaxies possibly formed.
“If all go well, the James Webb Space Telescope will help us to build up the story of how the first galaxies ever formed and how they grew into galaxies we see today and we live in today,” says Bradac. “But the chances of seeing those first born stars with the new telescope are small. There’s maybe even more of a chance that we might see some of those stars explode. Such information can help us understand how galaxies formed and changed into the familiar shapes and structures seen today. That’s what’s amazing about the new telescope.”
1. When did the Big Bang take place?| A．Around 13.0 billion years ago. |
| B．Around 13.4 billion years ago. |
| C．Around 13.6 billion years ago. |
| D．Around 13.8 billion years ago. |
| A．The Milky Way Galaxy. | B．The GN-z11 Galaxy. |
| C．The Andromeda Galaxy. | D．The NGC 3227 Galaxy. |
| A．The great potential of the new telescope. |
| B．The need for new scientific breakthroughs. |
| C．The cost of the James Webb Space Telescope. |
| D．The importance of the Hubble Space Telescope. |
| A．Find the first born star in the universe. |
| B．Witness the occurring of the Big Bang. |
| C．See the explosion of some of the first born stars. |
| D．Get a complete understanding of the universe. |
10 . There is a curious love triangle that sits at the center of the new documentary Fire of Love. It’s between a man, a woman and a volcano. Well, all of them are volcanoes.
Their names might not be especially well-known today, but in the 1970s and ‘80s, French scientists Katia Krafft and Maurice Krafft were very famous for their photographs and writings about the volcanoes. When they died in 1991 on Mount Unzen in Japan, their deaths were covered globally. But their story has somewhat faded in the public memory in the past three decades? though Werner Herzog did spotlight them in his 2016 documentary Into the Inferno.
The Kraffts? who first bonded over Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli and were married in 1970, witnessed about 140 eruptions on every continent except Antarctica and won an Emmy for their National Geographic documentary Mountains of Fire. They would famously drop everything to get to an active volcano, and were often the first on site. They were also known for their willingness to get dangerously close.
Filmmaker Sara Dosa once met the Kraffts while making an earlier film about Iceland many years ago. In 2020, with the help of Image’ Est, a French museum, and Maurice Krafft’s brother, Bertrand Krafft, Dosa and her team were able to get access to over 180 hours of footage shot by the Kraffts. So Dosa decided to make something about the Kraffts in the true spirit of the Kraffts.
“We wanted to let them play themselves. We see them as the authors of their own story,“ Dosa said. ”This is a co-creation, shot by them and starring them. We’re just stringing together the pieces of their life for the audience to connect with.”
However, Fire of Love is anything but a filmed Wikipedia(维基百科)page. Dosa and her team have drawn on the techniques of French New Wave films to help shape the style of their film, including playful multiple screens.
1. Where did Katia Krafft and Maurice Krafft pass away?| A．On Mount Etna. | B．On Mount Stromboli. |
| C．On Mount Unzen. | D．On Mount Krakatoa. |
| A．They were enthusiastic about studying volcanoes. |
| B．They were well-known for their short-lived marriage. |
| C．Their deaths were related to the biggest volcano. |
| D．Their love story appeared in many volcano books. |
| A．Bertrand Krafft. | B．Sara Dosa. | C．Werner Herzog. | D．Katia Krafft. |
| A．A love story. | B．A biography. | C．A documentary. | D．A film review. |
