1 . The art of fabric dyeing is an ancient one dating back to 3500 BC. Over the centuries we humans have sought to brighten our appearance with clothing that reflects the vibrant natural colours seen in nature, and many colourants were originally sourced from the natural world around us.

Waste chemicals from the dyes themselves are often highly toxic — Azo dyes which account for 60 — 70 per cent of all dyes used become toxic when broken down and metabolized — and the fixing agents used which can contain formaldehyd and chlorine compounds, are no better, with links to allergies and cancer, not only hazardous to humans but also to the environment.

When synthetic dyes were discovered in 1856 an even greater array of colours became possible, and with the advent of the industrial revolution the fabric industry boomed. In the modern age, consumer demand fuels the fashion houses and colour is king: but the dyeing of fabrics comes at a price.

In total over 8000 chemicals have been identified as being used in the dyeing process, many of which have been noted as hazardous to health. Add to this the vast amount of water required for the dyeing process in which huge water baths are needed at every stage of the process and we can see why the industry is one of the most environmentally damaging on earth, responsible for at least 17 — 20 per cent of total water pollution.

So is there another way? Well synthetic biologist Orr Yarkoni certainly thinks so. His company Colorifix have pioneered a new technique which bypasses traditional dyeing techniques in favour of an approach based on nature’s own methods. Rather than fighting nature he believes we need to tap into it in order to solve the complex environmental issues that challenge us today.

“Colorifix is very much inspired from nature” he says, “nature has created a whole palette of colours that we see on a daily basis”.

Sourcing colours from a range of natural pigments, he then engineers microorganisms using DNA to convert agricultural by-products into dyes. When the microorganisms burst , they “fix” the colour to the fabric, thus reducing the need for massive amounts of water. The organisms themselves can be grown, or fermented, once the DNA code for the necessary colourant has been implanted and this natural reproduction is fast and efficient. Overall the whole process uses less water, produces less waste, and needs far less chemicals. A new way forward inspired by nature.

1. According to the passage, dyeing fabrics comes at a price because ________.

A．The dyeing materials are poisonous

B．The dyeing materials are rather expensive

C．The dyeing process pollutes the environment

D．The dyeing process needs plenty of water

2. What is a feature of the dyeing technique proposed by Colorifix?

A．It is environmentally friendly.

B．It takes a longer time to acquire raw materials.

C．It employs natural color which does not stay long.

D．It needs less water but produces poisonous pollutants.

3. What can we infer from the passage?

A．The dyeing process can be pollution free.

B．Dyeing fabrics causes the main pollutants.

C．The color of nature only comes from plants.

D．Human has a long history of pursuing beautiful “color”.

4. Which of the following can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Breathing life into a dyeing art	B．History of dyeing industry
C．Unknown danger behind dyeing	D．Color comes with a price

2 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

In the 1970s, people who managed ponds in America had a problem    1    plants and snails in the water.    2    (control) the pests, the managers brought four species of carp, a type of fish, from Asia. But some of the fish    3    (escape) into rivers and other waterways. Soon, there were lots of fish. And they became troublesome invasive species. These non-native fish can bully ecosystems, quickly taking over.    4    (grow) fast and big, they ate lots of the food on which the native fish would normally depend.

3 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

The first day of school began on a bright note for a teacher who was glancing over the class roll. After each student’s name was a number, such as 138,140,154 and so on. “Look at these IQs,” she thought to    1    (she). “They’ve given me a terrific class.” As a result, the elated teacher worked harder with this class than with her others. She tried new    2    (innovation) that she thought would challenge them and hold their interest. And it worked. The class did much better than any of her other classes,    3    she had taught in the usual way. Only later did she find out that the figures after each pupil’s name stood for their locker numbers.

4 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

The world mistakenly    1    (undervalue) vocational training when it should be grateful! It doesn’t matter how skilled a designer is if they cannot build    2    they design. It is the common laborer and skilled tradesman that does that, and when it needs repair or rebuilding, it is the skilled tradesman that does that. Sure, today’s EV vehicles are great    3    the designer can’t assemble them or fix them. When it breaks down and leaves you stranded, the designers are useless! You need a skilled tradesman to fix it.

5 . There is a connection I feel with horses that is unlike anything I have ever experienced. They can be frightening because of their size, speed and unpredictability, but they also force you to be calm. I think that was the smartest thing my first riding teacher taught me when I was seven: if you’re calm, they will be calm.

I have never owned a horse, but for a year I got to take care of a pony, Baronet, that I had found abandoned when I was 11. I had moved to England for the second time in my short life. This period was filled with anxiety and instability and there were a lot of unaccompanied moments.

I saw him one day while I was out walking in the woods. He was staring at me from where he stood, wild and dirty. I just went to him and he came to me. I found the farmer who owned him, who said he was a lost cause: “Too difficult,” he said. When I asked if I could care for him, he didn’t hesitate: “Sure, take him.”

He wasn’t trained. He was stubborn and picky and angry. He had been labelled “difficult” just as I was labelled “Sunshine Girl”. It’s not a good thing to be labelled. “Sunshine Girl” made me feel like I couldn’t complain. I didn’t want to make anyone unhappy. I always felt I had to go with the flow.

Baronet saved me that year. He gave my life a sense of purpose and meaning. I would wake up early and walk two miles to the barn to feed him and try to train him, and the moment I came home from school I would run back to the barn to spend time with him.

Looking back, I see Baronet as a wonder. In some magical way I found Baronet when I needed him most and, as sad as I was to leave him at the end of the year, when we moved yet again, I saw the progress we had made together. Seeing that I could make a difference was a huge awakening for me as a child.

1. How did the writer probably feel when moving to England?

A．Worried.

B．Surprised.

C．Puzzled.

D．Excited.

2. What did the farmer probably mean by saying “he was a lost cause”?

A．Baronet was always alone.

B．Baronet could easily get lost.

C．Baronet could hardly survive.

D．Baronet was hard to deal with.

3. How did Baronet influence the writer?

A．It taught her not to complain.

B．It inspired her to be easygoing.

C．It helped her to get over loneliness.

D．It encouraged her to accept her label.

6 . Alone in the wilderness. Nothing but jungle. A world of shadow with the rays of light falling like blonde hair from the crowns of the giant trees. Jungle in the midday sun. Everything motionless. Not a sound from sky or earth. Complete silence. Only some coconuts falling, at long intervals, very far away. The world reduced to the soft touch of cool grass along my naked back, and a sweet smell of rich soil and vegetation. Stretched out with closed eyes beside my heavy burden of fruit and firewood, I enjoyed the feeling of fresh blood streaming through every part of my body and fresh jungle air filling every corner of my lungs.

Resting motionless, I could see the sun through my closed eyelids, alone in the sky, as lonely as I, and as motionless and silent as everything else. The earth had surely stopped turning and somewhere on this planet there was supposed to be roaring traffic in busy streets. What a crazy, unbelievable thought!

Another coconut fell, to make the world come to a complete standstill. I had to roll over onto my stomach to feel that at least I could move and make noises. Then I found company. A little brown ant was struggling to find its way with a bit of dry straw through the jungle of leaves and grass below my nose. I wondered if I could give the little fellow a lift with its burden, but it showed not the slightest sign of tiredness and struggled on with all six legs, head first or head last, waving its feelers energetically as if the trip had just started. Who ever saw a tired ant? Tiredness, disagreeable tiredness, is restricted to hunted animals, slaves and modern man. It is as great an effort for an office clerk to walk five blocks with a loaded brief-case as it is for a jungle-dweller to cross a valley with a goat on his back. It is as hard to get up and climb or run when you have been seated for years as it is to get up and walk when you have been in bed for months. The body is strange. Spare it, and you get really tired for almost nothing; use it, and almost nothing makes you really tired.

I rose to my feet. I had heard a horse neighing down in the valley. Above me, on the open highland plains, there were wild horses. But down in the valley there was never a horse unless there was a man on it. Somebody was making his way up the valley and my wife was alone.

1. The author mentions coconuts’ falling to ________ .

A．show his loneliness	B．add beauty to the jungle
C．express his love of nature	D．stress the absolute silence

2. How does the author feel about the ant?

A．He admired its attitude toward work.

B．He was amazed at its tireless efforts.

C．He showed sympathy for the little ant.

D．He was content to have it as a companion.

3. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that the author would probably________.

A．make his way home	B．stay in the valley
C．work harder than before	D．talk to the man on the horse

7 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。

The Power of Determination

Your quest for success and happiness begins with right intentions. It culminates (达到顶点) when you reach your chosen goals. What sustains your effort in between is your determination. What carries you towards your goals is your determination. It means the firmness of purpose or intention.

If there is one gift that you can give to yourself in your life to be what you want to be, it is the power of determination. Without it you are a mere passive spectator in the drama of your life. If there is one quality that makes a difference between a winner and a loser or a leader and a follower, it is the power of determination. Without it, you may dream wild dreams, but you will not accomplish much in life. If you have determination, nothing can stop you and deter you from following your course of action to achieve your goals or realize your dreams.

Obstacles may arise and obstruct your progress. They may delay your success, disturb you temporarily, and may even mislead you, but they cannot withstand the power of determination. It is the power that you generate within yourself to remain committed to your path and conviction, and march towards your cherished goals. Before you take up any project or goal, you should know whether you have the determination to stick to your plans and reach your goals. Your determination has to arise from within and derive its reinforcement from your thinking and beliefs rather than circumstances. Only then will you be able to sustain your effort, even when the going gets tough. Determination is your inner strength. Like the hardwood inside a tree, it gives you the power to stand tall and face the winds of turmoil.

With determination, you can crush the mountains of fear and doubts in you. You can find your way through the most difficult situations. Determination does not mean you will be insensitive to the reality of the situation. A determined person is also an adaptable and flexible person. He is not interested in being tough for toughness sake, but to overcome obstacles and reach his goals. Hence, he remains open-minded about possibilities and opportunities, but firm in his commitment and convictions. Discipline and determination go together. If you have them, you become unstoppable.

1. According to the passage, what is determination?
2. What would happen if one does not have determination?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
With determination, you can crush the mountains of fear and doubts in you, and you will not make changes.
4. How does being determined benefit you? (In about 40 words)

8 . It was 2005 and scientists in Cape Town made a shocking discovery. Their tracking data showed a great white shark moving from South Africa to Australia and back again in a near straight line. It was the fastest transoceanic return migration ever recorded and it was carried out with near pinpoint accuracy. Today, it’s well known that sharks make yearly returns such as this to specific locations, but how exactly they do it has escaped consensus.

A group of scientists from Florida State University has taken on the question and concluded that sharks have an internal, GPS-like navigation system that allows them to read the Earth’s geomagnetic field. To conduct the research, the team first got 20 juvenile bonnethead sharks in St George Sound off the Florida Panhandle, and placed them in a small pool surrounded by copper wire. The wire allowed the researchers to create a custom magnetic field in the centre of the pool. Exposed to the magnetic field from the capture location, the sharks swam in random directions at leisure; but when exposed to the geomagnetic field that would be found 600 kilometres south of that spot, they swam north in a “homeward orientation”.

Researchers have suspected that sharks and sawfish detect magnetic fields since the 1970s, but the exact mechanism by which they do so, and the prevalence of this skill in nature has proven elusive, partly because it’s so difficult to study. “We’ve known for some time that sharks have the ability to detect the magnetic field, but this is the first time it has been tested successfully,” says Bryan Keller, a scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We expect these abilities are also observed in other species, like the great white, which migrate 20,000 kilometres out and back to the same spot.” The results mean that some sharks can be added to the growing list of animals that navigate by magnetic sensation, which includes sea turtles, lobsters and birds.

With the shark navigation system now demonstrated, scientists want to understand the mechanism behind it. Two theories have emerged: some researchers believe that it depends on an iron mineral called magnetite; others believe it’s based on a magnetic-field-sensing molecule in the retina (视网膜) of the eye called cryptochrome. Both theories, or a combination of the two, are plausible. Magnetite has been isolated from many animal tissues, while evidence from studies in birds suggests that they sense the inclination of the magnetic field using cryptochrome molecules in their retinas; the direction of the field is transmitted by the optic nerve to the brain, which allows them to “visualize” north and south. But scientists don’t yet know the precise location of the cryptochrome receptors, or the brain centres that process the information on the magnetic field. There’s more work to do to truly understand these masterful navigators.

1. Scientists in Cape Town discovered sharks could ______.

A．migrate fast and accurately	B．navigate by magnetic system
C．detect magnetic fields precisely	D．swim in a straight line perfectly

2. In the Florida State University research, the sharks swam north because they ______.

A．lost the navigation system	B．could not detect magnetic fields
C．sensed their home magnetic field	D．were exposed to a strange magnetic field

3. The underlined word “elusive” in paragraph 3 probably means ______.

A．unique	B．unattainable
C．complex	D．superior

4. The last paragraph mainly talks about ______ of shark navigation system.

A．the evolution	B．the application
C．the advantages	D．the mechanism

9 . When teaching, always assume the worst! No, that’s not some world-weary call to pessimism, but actually a positive strategy for supporting students in the classroom. Consider the problems that can arise when you don’t do this, and instead take as your starting assumption that things are probably, basically okay:

Teacher: Did you get on all right with the homework questions?

Student: Er, yes…

Teacher: Are there any you want to go through?

Student: Er, no—it’s fine…

What’s going on here? The student clearly feels that “yes” is the expected answer to the first question, but having said that, they’re then more or less forced into answering “no” to the second. Any problems they might have experienced are buried, and consequently go unresolved.

A much better approach is to assume the worst, to the point of setting up failure as the starting point. Then, if necessary, the student can be in the happy position of bringing you good news, which gives the impression of placing them in a more powerful position. Let’s imagine that same exchange again:

Teacher: Those homework questions were hard. Did you manage any of them?

Student: Yes, I did the first one, but I couldn’t do any of the others.

Teacher: Okay—do you want to go through the others?

Student: Yes, please.

This time, we’ve made it easy for the student to admit their difficulties. There’s no pretense (借口) around everything being fine when it isn’t, and no shame in the student admitting to having problems, as that’s clearly the teacher’s starting assumption.

It takes no longer to frame things this way round, but makes it so much easier for the student to be honest. Paradoxically, it’s also much more positive in that the student is constantly exceeding the teacher’s expectations— “You managed question one? Well done! Now, let’s look at the others…”

Every counsellor knows that if they ask a client “Did you have a good week?”, they’re more likely to get a positive response, because it’s a leading question that doesn’t communicate a strong interest in hearing the truth. Instead, a more neutral question like “How was your week?” is much more likely to elicit an honest response.

The same applies in the classroom. We want to avoid fakery and being told what we want to hear. Instead, we have to probe for the problems, the difficulties, the things that make no sense to the student, and make it easy for them to tell us those things.

1. Which question is preferred according to the author?

A．Did you manage any of the hard questions in the homework?

B．Did you get on all right with the homework questions?

C．Do you have any questions you want to go through?

D．Do you think the homework questions are hard?

2. According to the passage, good questions ______.

A．promote communications	B．should be based on honesty
C．reveal different assumptions	D．ought to make others happy

3. This article is mainly intended for ______.

A．parents

B．teachers

C．students

D．researchers

10 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Nowadays, many people have more than one job, or a slash career. For people encouraging slash careers, secondary jobs will become     1     (enjoy) if they can include interests the primary job doesn’t touch. On the other hand, a slash career can be dangerous for work-life balance. Working more than one job can fill up all of your time. One might give up necessary things     2     relaxation, exercise or time with one’s family. People with slash careers need to think carefully about     3     they use their time.