1 . “What’s the story of your piano?” a friend asked over dinner. My piano just _________ in the corner of my living room. “It has a story?” I doubted.

“All pianos have stories,” she replied. Suddenly my piano’s story came _________ out of me as if I’d always had this tale to tell.

I’ve loved _________ since childhood. I started with the recorder and moved on to the violin and guitar. Playing the piano had always been my _________ which my family couldn’t afford. I grew up in a poor immigrant family in Toronto. My father _________ tables in a restaurant and my mother worked in a laundry. Though our childhood was _________, my brothers and I were always fed with     _________. I can’t remember which birthday it was when my mother _________ some money to buy me a doll. By then I’d outgrown wanting dolls but she worked too hard to know that and I never told her. I _________ accepted it.

So it was finally with my ____________. It was in my last year of high school. I took piano lessons for about a year before university forced me to ____________. I had to make a decision: to pursue（追求） a more ____________ goal of medical school or my love for music. The realist in me ____________ and I had to give up piano lessons ____________ as with my doll it was too late to learn to play the way I wanted. I ____________ the piano around with me over the next decade until my son was born. He showed an early ____________ in music so I put him in piano lessons. I played that piano through my son although guitar ____________ became his choice.

I gradually realized that I’d let all my pleasures ____________ for my job. I figured I’d get back to playing the piano when I retire. Maybe it’s time to get that piano tuned again before it’s too late to     ____________. Maybe that’s something we should do right now.

Sometimes a ____________ question can open a path of thinking and discovery. So what’s the story of your piano?

1.

A．hides

B．sits

C．rises

D．appears

2.

A．flooding

B．jumping

C．spreading

D．breaking

3.

A．dolls

B．medicine

C．performances

D．music

4.

A．life

B．goal

C．dream

D．choice

5.

A．reserved

B．decorated

C．waited

D．made

6.

A．difficult

B．lonely

C．fantastic

D．happy

7.

A．food

B．love

C．confidence

D．hardship

8.

A．collected

B．changed

C．borrowed

D．spared

9.

A．gratefully

B．quietly

C．eagerly

D．actively

10.

A．decision

B．belief

C．piano

D．opinion

11.

A．consider

B．continue

C．refuse

D．stop

12.

A．perfect

B．practical

C．successful

D．necessary

13.

A．compromised

B．failed

C．agreed

D．won

14.

A．unless

B．till

C．because

D．before

15.

A．found

B．played

C．abandoned

D．moved

16.

A．desire

B．interest

C．ambition

D．plan

17.

A．eventually

B．gradually

C．unexpectedly

D．obviously

18.

A．fall away

B．light up

C．give out

D．show off

19.

A．experience

B．enjoy

C．learn

D．fix

20.

A．serious

B．doubtful

C．single

D．private

2 . It is a question people have been asking for ages. Is there a way to turn back the aging process?

For centuries, people have been looking for a “fountain of youth”. The idea is that if you find a magical fountain, and drink from its waters, you will not age.

Researchers in New York did not find an actual fountain of youth, but they may have found a way to turn back the aging process. It appears the answer may be hidden right between your eyes, in an area called the hypothalamus (下丘脑). The hypothalamus is part of your brain. It controls important activities within the body.

Researchers at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that hypothalamus neural (神经的) stem cells also influence how fast aging takes place in the body.

What are stem cells(干细胞)? They are simple cells that can develop into specialized cells, like blood or skin cells. Stem cells can also repair damaged tissues and organs.

Dongsheng Cai is a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was the lead researcher in a study on aging in mice. He and his team reported their findings in the journal Nature, Cai explained when hypothalamus function is in decline, particularly the loss of hypothalamus stem cells, and this protection against the aging development is lost. it eventually leads to aging.

Using this information, the researchers began trying to activate, or energize, the hypothalamus laboratory mice. They did this by injecting the animals with stem cells, Later, the researchers examined tissues and tested for changes in behavior. They looked for changes in the strength and coordination (协调) of the animals muscles. They also studied the social behavior and cognitive ability of the mice. The researchers say the results show that the treatment slowed aging in the animals, Cai says injecting middle-aged mice with stem cells from younger mice helped the older animals live longer.

But these results were just from studying mice in a laboratory. If the mice can live longer, does that mean people could have longer lives? The next step is to see if the anti-aging effects also work in.

1. In Paragraph 2 a “fountain of youth” is mentioned to ________.

A．introduce the main topic

B．show a hidden secret.

C．describe scientists research

D．recommend a way to stay young

2. Aging takes place in the body when _______.

A．stem cells develop into specialized cells

B．there are important activities within the body

C．hypothalamus neural stem cells fail to protect against aging

D．the hypothalamus fails to repair damaged tissues and organs

3. What do we know about the researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine from the text?

A．They did experiments to see how stem cells work.

B．They studied mice to find their connection with humans.

C．They have found a possible way to slow the aging progress.

D．They have found no changes in mice s behavior during the experiment

4. What will the researchers probably do next?

A．They will help some animals live longer.

B．They will announce the fountain of youth doesn’t exist

C．They will develop products to help people live a longer life immediately

D．They will do research to see if what they have found in mice will apply to humans.

3 . How to Improve Your English

Learning English is a continuous process. For tips on how to improve your English, read on.

Read English newspapers, books, and magazines. Reading is an active process that requires your brain to work. When learning a language, much is achieved by speaking, listening and writing.     1     When you read, you learn new words and will be able to use them.

    2     After reading the daily papers, choose one or two articles that stood out among all those that you read, and write down your reactions to them. Read what you wrote afterwards, and check if you made any grammatical errors or would like to improve your work.

Read the book version of a movie that you have already seen.     3     Reading the book version means you will find it easier to understand and guess vocabulary, and you can remember it easily since the story is already familiar to you.

Teach English to children or friends.     4     This also holds true for the English language. When you share and teach English to others, you are able to practice. At the same time, you become more aware of your weak areas.

Use English every day. Whatever you are doing, from washing the dishes or taking out the garbage to going to work or to the gym, use English. Take out those new words that you learned and use them. Bring out those new idioms you came across and use them.     5     Learn how to use it in your daily life.

As you try to improve your English day by day, you will surely see improvements that are going to “make your day”.

A．Open your mouth.

B．Keep a news diary.

C．But reading is also a great help.

D．Listening to songs can help you improve your English.

E．The best way to improve something is by teaching it to others.

F．If the new knowledge stays inside your head and in your notebooks, it won’t come to life.

G．If you are not a serious book reader, reading a story that you are already familiar with will help you move along page by page.

4 . Examples of effective conservation of places matter to the world. They range from the 1960s Nubian campaign to safeguard Ancient Egyptian monuments from the waters of the Aswan Dam to the removal in 2018 of the Belize Barrier Reef from the List of World Heritage in Danger. Conservation is the core purpose of the World Heritage Convention and it may also be its biggest challenge.

The following example shows how successes at specific sites now serve as models for conservation and sustainable (可持续性) development. A year after Vienna was included on the World Heritage List in 2001, the World Heritage Committee (WHC) expressed concerns about the architectural solutions and height of four planned towers of the Wien-Mitte project. This development project, close to the Historic Centre of Vienna in the site’s buffer zone, the one that lies between two or more other areas, affected the urban scale (规模) and visual effects in and around the property (地产). As a result of the Committee’s concerns, Vienna changed its building codes and launched a new design competition for the Wien-Mitte project to work out architectural plans with reduced size in keeping with World Heritage protection.

The successful practice inspired the government of the city to invite over 600 experts and professionals from 55 countries to an international conference on World Heritage and contemporary architecture, held in Vienna in May 2005. The global discussion that followed, detailing an approach to managing conservation and development, was recorded in the UNESCO Recommendation in 2011.

The Recommendation put forwards an all-rounded and combined approach to balancing urban heritage (遗产) conservation and economic development, arguing that active protection and management of urban heritage supports the goal of sustainable development.

The Recommendation supports the harmonious combination of contemporary involvement into the historic urban framework while holding on to values linked to history, memory and the environment.

1. Why does the author mention the Belize Barrier Reef in Paragraph 1?

A．To explain the goal of the organization.

B．To encourage the public to protect the world.

C．To show the positive effect of conservation.

D．To remind people of the environmental problems.

2. Why was WHC worried about the Wien-Mitte project?

A．It took up too much public land of the city.

B．It had a bad effect on the Historic Centre of Vienna.

C．Its original designs were not environmentally friendly.

D．Its architectural solutions couldn’t meet safety standards.

3. What did the global discussion focus on?

A．The ways to combine conservation and development.

B．The creation of the new UNESCO Recommendation.

C．The international urban management and development.

D．The styles of the contemporary architecture of Vienna.

4. What is the authors purpose in writing the text?

A．To examine the challenges faced by global urban planners.

B．To introduce alternative ways of protecting the environment.

C．To stress the importance of the value of history and memory.

D．To promote active conservation and sustainable development.

5 . When I was in fourth grade, I worked part-time as a paperboy. Mrs. Stanley was one of my customers. She’d watch me coming down her street, and by the time I’d biked up to her doorstep, there’d be a cold drink waiting. I’d sit and drink while she talked.

Mrs. Stanley talked mostly about her dead husband, “Mr. Stanley and I went shopping this morning.” she’d say. The first time she said that, soda(汽水) went up my nose.

I told my father how Mrs. Stanley talked as if Mr. Stanley were still alive. Dad said she was probably lonely, and that I ought to sit and listen and nod my head and smile, and maybe she’d work it out of her system. So that’s what I did, and it turned out Dad was right. After a while she seemed content to leave her husband over at the cemetery(墓地).

I finally quit delivering newspapers and didn’t see Mrs. Stanley for several years. Then we crossed paths at a church fund-raiser(募捐活动). She was spooning mashed potatoes and looking happy. Four years before, she’d had to offer her paperboy a drink to have someone to talk with. Now she had friends. Her husband was gone, but life went on.

I live in the city now, and my paperboy is a lady named Edna with three kids. She asks me how I’m doing. When I don’t say “fine”, she sticks around to hear my problems. She’s lived in the city most of her life, but she knows about community. Community isn’t so much a place as it is a state of mind. You find it whenever people ask how you’re doing because they care, and not because they’re getting paid to do so. Sometimes it’s good to just smile, nod your head and listen.

1. Why did soda go up the author’s nose one time?

A．He was talking fast.	B．He was shocked.
C．He was in a hurry.	D．He was absent-minded.

2. Why did the author sit and listen to Mrs. Stanley according to Paragraph 3?

A．He enjoyed the drink.	B．He wanted to be helpful.
C．He took the chance to rest.	D．He tried to please his dad.

3. Which of the following can replace the underlined phrase “work it out of her system”?

A．recover from her sadness	B．move out of the neighborhood
C．turn to her old friends	D．speak out about her past

4. What does the author think people in a community should do?

A．Open up to others.	B．Depend on each other.
C．Pay for other’s help	D．Care about one another.