Ali and his younger sister, Zahra, lived with their parents in a poor neighborhood. Their mother was very sick and their father was struggling to find a job, and they had only a little money with which to buy food. As they had not paid the rent for several months, the landlord was breathing down their necks.
One day, Ali took Zahra's shoes to a shoe repairman to be fixed, but he lost them on the way home. It wasn’t until he got home that he realized he had lost the shoes. He was afraid that his parents would be angry and disappointed, so he begged his sister to keep it a secret. Zahra agreed and the two decided to share Ali’s running shoes. Zahra's school hours were in the morning, so she would wear them first. After school, she would rush back and give them to Ali. He could then run to his school, which began in the afternoon. Although he ran as fast as he could, Ali often arrived late and was warned by the school.
Ali heard about a long distance race that was held for the boys in the city.When he learned that the third prize was a new pair of shoes, he decided to take part. He ran home excitedly and promised his sister that he would win her the new shoes.
The day of race arrived. Ali had a strong start, but halfway through the race he began to get tired and his legs began to ache. Getting more and more exhausted he thought only of Zahra and his promise to her. Dreaming of the new shoes he would win for his sister gave him strength, and he stayed right behind the two fastest runners, determined to finish third. Suddenly, as the finish line drew near, another runner collided(碰撞) with Ali from behind and he crashed to the ground.
Ali looked up and saw the other boys rushing ahead.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Filled with delight, Ali walked home quickly.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . In his new book The Journeys of Trees, science writer Zach St. George explores an extremely slow migration(迁 徙), as forests move inch by inch to more hospitable places. As old trees die and new ones grow up, the forest is—ever so slightly—moving, he writes. “Through the fossils(化石) that ancient forests left behind, scientists can track their movement. They move back and forth across continents, like migrating birds or whales.”
This has happened over thousands of years, and climate change tends to be the driving force—pushing and pulling forests around the globe. Of course, today, climate change is speeding up, and trees can’t keep pace. Take Califomnia: It’s getting hotter and drier and scientists estimate that before too long, Joshua Tree National Park may not be able to sustain Joshua trees. Zach St. George describes a similar threat to Sequoia National Park, during California’s long and severe drought a few years back.
Scientists worried that maybe Sequoia National Park would no longer be the place for giant sequoias. St. George thinks at some point we will lose these ancient trees and we will have to think about what we do with the places, and do we plant new ones somewhere else? This is known as “assisted migration”—humans planting trees in other places where they’re more likely to grow well. But this process carries risks—people can accidentally introduce insects and diseases to new places, where they may wipe out entire native populations. So, St. George writes, there’s a debate among conservationists and foresters today: Should humans help the trees escape?
“I think there are going to be instances where people are probably going to step in and help species move to places where they’ll be more suitable in the future,” St. George says. “And I met a lot of people in the process who have felt sorry about what has been lost and what will be lost—and are still continuing to try and do good and work in the moment for small things.”
1. What does the underlined word “They” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Animals. | B．Fossils. | C．Scientists. | D．Forests. |
| A．To confirm the problem of the loss of tree species is serious. |
| B．To argue humans should be responsible for the loss of trees. |
| C．To explain climate change results in the migration of forests. |
| D．To prove forests can slow down the process of climate change. |
| A．It can prevent the trees escaping. |
| B．It can promote biological diversity. |
| C．It may help to protect the forests. |
| D．It may affect species in new places. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Intolerant. |
3 . It’s unlikely that we’ll see a dodo, a flightless bird, walking this earth anytime again, according to Beth Shapiro, a evolutionary molecular biologist.
“When most people think about de-extinction, they’re imagining cloning,” Shapiro said. Cloning, the approach that created Dolly, the sheep in 1996 and Elizabeth Ann, the black-footed ferret in 2020, creates an identical genetic copy of an individual by putting DNA from a living adult cell into an egg cell from which the nucleus (细胞核) has been removed. Adult cells contain all the DNA needed to develop into a living animal. Egg cells then use that DNA as a blueprint to turn themselves into many kinds of cells——skin, organs, blood and bones——the animal needs.
“But no living cells from dodos exist. Instead,” Shapiro said, “you’d have to start with a closely related animal’s genome (基因组) and then change it into one similar to dodos.” For example， mammoths (猛犸) are also extinct，but they were very closely related to modern Asian elephants, so researchers are attempting to bring mammoths back from extinction by creating a hybrid mammoth with some mammoth genes replacing part of the elephant genome in an elephant egg cell. However, there are likely millions of genetic differences between the genome of an Asian elephant and that of a mammoth according to Shapiro.
As for the dodo, its closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon. Mammoths and Asian elephants are pretty closely related, whereas it had been more than 20 million years since the dodo and the Nicobar pigeon had any common ancestors. Genetic differences between the two bird species are therefore much greater, making it a formidable task to create a successful hybrid in the lab, Shapiro said.
Even if scientists manage to bring dodos back, the island where they once lived is a very different place nowadays, which make it impossible to reintroduce dodos without major intervention.
1. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．The special role of DNA. |
| B．The process of cloning. |
| C．The development of cloning. |
| D．The complexity of cloning. |
| A．Dodos are harder to bring back to life. |
| B．Their living cells are hard to preserve. |
| C．Cloning can be used to recreate extinct animals. |
| D．They share a similar genome with Asian elephants. |
| A．Urgent. |
| B．Possible. |
| C．Tough. |
| D．Different. |
| A．Favorable. |
| B．Intolerant. |
| C．Objective. |
| D．Negative. |
4 . The sperm whale is an astonishing creature. It’s longer than a semi-truck, weighs more than 90, 000 pounds and is the largest member of the toothed whale family. It’s known to dive 6, 500 feet in search of food, and to stay down there for longer than an hour at a time.
Perhaps most fantastically, the sperm whale’s brain weighs as much as 20 pounds-the biggest of any species on Earth. But when it comes to brains, is size all that matters? There’s a lot we don’t know about the sperm whale’s intelligence because it’s difficult to carry out neurological (神经的) testing on such a huge marine mammal. But some clues point to sperm whales being much smarter than we give them credit for.
A 2021 study published in Biology Letters, for example, looked back to 19th-century historical logbooks from whalers. Researchers found that sperm whales were at first easy to catch-but almost immediately, the whales learned how to evade hunters and whaling success dropped by 60 percent. The study suggests that the whales passed information to one another through soundwaves to avoid being caught.
Animals that have big brains usually have a few things in common. They usually live long lives; for example, sperm whales can live for 70 years or longer. Additionally, they’re capable of complex behaviors and they tend to be more socia1. Whales may work together to hunt or communicate in a language all their own.
What’s more, humans, whales and dolphins all have spindle neurons in their brains. These nerve cells make us capable of deeper thought, such as reasoning skills, memory, communication and adaptive thinking. And like humans, whales have emotional intelligence- meaning they＇re capable of empathy, grief and sadness. Still, in proportion to (与…成比例)our body size, the human brain is bigger than that of the sperm whale.
Yet there’s still so much we don’t know about how smart sperm whales really are. And just like the whalers of a century ago, we have likely been underestimating marine mammals, whether large or small, for as long as we’ve known of their existence.
1. Why do people know little about the sperm whale’s intelligence?| A．Sperm whales’ big size makes research difficult. |
| B．It didn’t attract scientists’ attention until recently. |
| C．Whalers didn’t keep enough records of their hunting. |
| D．Sperm whales usually stay deep down in the ocean. |
| A．Track. | B．Avoid. | C．Locate. | D．Trick. |
| A．The nerve cells distinguish humans from animals. |
| B．Sperm whales have smaller brains than humans. |
| C．Spindle neurons make higher intelligence possible. |
| D．Emotional intelligence is unique to whales and humans. |
| A．Sperm Whales Are Astonishingly Smart |
| B．Sperm Whales Have the Biggest Brain |
| C．Break the Code of Whale Language |
| D．Unlock the Mystery of Sea Mammals |
5 . Many years ago, I was living with my best friend and we had many happy moments together. But there was one night that
On the night of November 25, 2011, I got into a fistfight with my best friend in our kitchen. It all started because I was trying to help him. He was drinking a lot, arguing with everyone and
I thought alcohol
That Christmas my friend didn’t have any place to go, so I invited him home to my parents’ house in Lancaster. They
That year my friend and I both received gifts that we would
| A．defined | B．inspired | C．created | D．changed |
| A．defending | B．separating | C．protecting | D．locking |
| A．communication | B．investigation | C．exploration | D．promotion |
| A．put up | B．take away | C．break out | D．call off |
| A．talking | B．crying | C．fighting | D．laughing |
| A．access | B．addition | C．abuse | D．affection |
| A．look | B．break | C．drive | D．carry |
| A．time | B．holiday | C．gift | D．family |
| A．happily | B．generally | C．formally | D．hurriedly |
| A．awake | B．asleep | C．available | D．absorbed |
| A．generosity | B．curiosity | C．ability | D．creativity |
| A．admitted | B．realized | C．recognized | D．accepted |
| A．exchange | B．present | C．treasure | D．appreciate |
| A．day | B．test | C．skill | D．eye |
| A．kind | B．grateful | C．blessed | D．healthy |
6 . “I like pigs,” Winston Churchill supposedly once said. “Dogs look up at us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals.” Whether Churchill’s contemporary George Orwell also liked pigs is less clear. But he, too, surely saw something in them that was lacking in other domestic beasts, for it was they who ended up running the show in novel Animal Farm. Pigs, then, are intelligent social creatures.
And, like all animals, they sometimes fight. A study just published in Animal Cognition by Ivan Norscia, a biological anthropologist at the University of Turin, in Italy, and his colleagues, looked at how a group of 104 domestic pigs went about resolving such incidents. In total, Dr. Norscia and his team studied the details of 216 pig conflicts over the course of six months.
Some pigs tend to be attackers; others tend to be victims. Who is what depends largely on weight, for, among pigs pounds mean power. The attacker might bite, kick, bump or lift the victim (or string together a sequence of those actions). Most conflicts ended in seconds, but some lasted a minute or two.
In most animal species that would be that. However, many of the pig conflicts Dr. Norscia observed had interested parties beyond the protagonists (主角). He therefore wanted to understand the role of these bystanders in resolving fights —and what this says about pigs’ cognitive (认知) abilities.
Since there was usually not enough time for a bystander pig to intervene during the heat of a conflict (though this did occur), he and his colleagues looked at what happened in the three minutes directly following an aggressive interaction. Sometimes, they found, the protagonists made up on their own —for instance, by touching noses.
On other occasions, though, a third pig stepped in. Sometimes this bystander acted as a peacemaker, engaging with the attacker and reducing the number of subsequent attacks compared with what might otherwise have been expected. Sometimes, by contrast, the bystander engaged with the victim. This appeared to calm the victim down, for it reduced anxiety-related behavior such as shaking and scratching.
1. Why does the author mention Winston Churchill in the first paragraph?| A．To prove pigs are clever. | B．To show pigs are inspirational. |
| C．To state Churchill loves pigs. | D．To introduce the topic of the text. |
| A．Their ages. | B．Their weight. |
| C．Their safety needs. | D．Their cognitive abilities. |
| A．To comprehend the role of bystanders in conflict resolution. |
| B．To figure out the relationship between pigs. |
| C．To record the details of 216 pig conflicts. |
| D．To find out the reason for pigs’ conflicts. |
| A．By shaking it. | B．By touching its nose. |
| C．By scratching its back. | D．By offering comfort to it. |
7 . The train had been long delayed. Running out of
He lay down and fell asleep but was soon woken up by a woman. She handed him his bag and
Andy’s thoughts drifted(飘)to when he was
Andy woke up later feeling much better. Then he noticed the woman,who’d
Without thinking twice, Andy wrapped his mother’s scarf around the baby. To his
| A．luck | B．patience | C．time | D．energy |
| A．train | B．truth | C．cause | D．notice |
| A．insisted | B．explained | C．apologized | D．admitted |
| A．surprised | B．ready | C．thankful | D．expecting |
| A．checking | B．leaving | C．planning | D．packing |
| A．hurt | B．annoyed | C．ashamed | D．puzzled |
| A．Lately | B．Finally | C．Suddenly | D．Instantly |
| A．look | B．pill | C．rest | D．sandwich |
| A．for safety | B．on purpose | C．in case | D．by accident |
| A．calmness | B．confidence | C．comfort | D．care |
| A．warmth | B．memory | C．smell | D．touch |
| A．helped | B．pleased | C．disturbed | D．greeted |
| A．comfortably | B．safely | C．gently | D．tightly |
| A．relief | B．amazement | C．mind | D．advantage |
| A．arms | B．scarfs | C．passengers | D．mothers |
The 18-hectare construction site of the Huashan section of Wuhan Metro Line 19 is situated near an ecological reserve. Efforts had to be made
When Hua
However, months
The incident took place at Cheektowaga, a town in Erie County, New York, in the middle of a historic and dangerous snowstorm. I had gone out to visit my friend living in another county, but unfortunately I got stuck and was unable to drive further.
I fully realized how dangerous this would be as there was not enough gas left in the truck for me to get through the deadly snowstorm. The situation got even worse in such a place without any houses in sight.
I stayed in my truck, calling for help anxiously but the weak signal didn’t help me get connected. There was nothing I could do but wait. At midnight, there came a knock outside the truck. I opened the door and surprisingly found an old lady standing in the storm with just a thin coat, clearly not enough to survive the snowstorm. I invited her to get inside my truck at once. She told me in a weak voice that her name was Mary and her car broke down. She had walked a long way before finding my truck.
Misfortune never came alone. Soon, we realized the air conditioner burned all the fuel in my truck and it was getting colder and colder inside the truck. Mary closed her eyes without saying a word, shaking in the corner. Considering Mary’s condition, I decided to take action right now. Luckily, the GPS of my truck still worked. And with the help of GPS, I noticed that a school was nearby. I decided to take shelter in the school. Since Mary was too weak to move, I carried her on my back, heading to the school. After ten minutes’ struggle in the snow, we finally arrived, but found the school gate locked.
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。
I hesitated about what I should do.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The next morning, a policeman drove by and found the gate broken.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________10 . If you have no difficulty in understanding what native English speakers say in daily life, there is a whole new world of brilliant podcast (播客) series to explore. If you aren’t sure where to start, have a look at these:
| The Joc Rogan Experience ★★★★★ The Joc Rogan Experience is a great learning device because of its interesting English conversations between Rogan and his guests. At the time of writing there have been over 1,660 episodes with subjects ranging from comedy and science to politics and sports. Rogan is also a famous stand-up comedian, so the show is full of cultural references and idioms. |
| This American Life ★★★★★ This American Life is a great choice for English learners who want an insight into the culture of the USA. It is a mixture of journalism and storytelling, focusing on real-life tales from citizens of all regions of the country. The stories are new and varied. One episode was taped for 24 hours in an all-night restaurant; another interviewed workers on strike. |
| The Writer's Voice ★★★★☆ The New Yorker is a famous American magazine, and every week it prints a new short story. In this podcast, the week's story is read aloud by its writer. The published work covers a wide range of life experiences across the United States and beyond. It's a great way to enjoy some of the best new fiction in the country. |
| Overheard at National Geographic ★★★★★ National Geographic is a much-loved American magazine (and TV channel) famous for incredible stories and photography related to science and the environment. Overheard is about the discussions Nat Geo employees have had while taking breaks. Expect crazy stories from explorers, photographers, and scientists from around the world. |
| A．have interaction with hosts |
| B．have good English competence |
| C．be interested in being a podcaster |
| D．be familiar with American social life |
| A．The Writer's Voice. |
| B．This American Life. |
| C．The Joe Rogan Experience. |
| D．Overheard at National Geographic. |
| A．They enjoy great popularity. |
| B．Their stories are set in America. |
| C．They are attached to magazines. |
| D．Their works are updated weekly. |
