As a young boy, I was always a troublemaker and up to no good. I liked playing tricks and enjoyed treating animals in an unfriendly way, like running after cats crazily, making them scared at the sight of me. Besides, I often used a handmade catapult (弹弓) to shoot at birds on the trees.
All this did afford me indescribable pleasure but also got me unkind stares and blames from people around. My parents disapproved of my behavior and were constantly criticizing me for the tricks I played. I was even given a good beating from my father from time to time. Nevertheless, I ignored their warnings and did not correct my ways until an incident occurred.
One summer noon when I was eight, I was alone at home and just finished lunch. Feeling very hot and bored, I decided to hang around the neighborhood, holding my trusty catapult.
Soon, I came to Mr Smith’s house. His pet dog, big and strong, was tied to a post outside his house, lying in the shade lazily. Looking around, I found that no one was in sight. I decided to make good use of my catapult to play tricks on the massive dog. Picking up a few small stones from the ground, I aimed at the dog and fired them one by one. Several stones hit the poor dog and it began to bark (吠) loudly in pain and jump up and down. But I felt so fun that I didn’t stop doing so. Eventually, the dog’s anger was fueled and it barked wildly at me while struggling to break away from the rope. Not realizing anything wrong with my crazy behavior, I was just laughing happily.
Suddenly, the rope that tied the dog loosened and the big dog got free from its bonds. In no time, with a few powerful steps the dog was on me. Its sharp teeth sank into my leg. I screamed with pain and fright and fell to the ground, shouting out for help.
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。
Luckily, my miserable shouts caught Mr Smith’s attention.
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His words left me ashamed and I decided to make a change.
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A New Addition to the Family
For the initial ten years of his life, Victor was the prince of the household. As he was an only child, his parents petted him and showered all their love and attention on him. Whatever toys his parents bought, they were always meant for him. Whatever food was in the refrigerator, there was no one to compete with him to polish it off first. Victor could leave his toys or books around the house with complete ease of mind, knowing that there was no one who would get their hands on his belongings and cause any damage.
However, all that was to change overnight when Victor’s parents brought back his new baby sister, Lina, from the hospital. With her rosy cheeks, wide open eyes and angelic smile, Lina caught the hearts of her parents, grandparents and relatives. Everyone focused their attention on the cute bunch of joy. Whenever she cried, her mother or father would rush to her bed. She simply cried because she wanted to be carried. There was little time left for Victor.
Now that Victor’s mother had his baby sister to take care of, she expected Victor himself to do most of the chores he can do. Victor was asked to clean his own room, iron his own school uniform and clean his own shoes. Before Lina’s arrival, he had never lifted a finger to help out with these tasks. The whole family also went out less because it was unhealthy to expose Lina to the bacteria(细菌) being in the outside world too often.
Victor felt neglected by his parents. He felt that they loved Lina more than him. As a result, he tried to attract his parents’ attention by becoming resistant. One evening, Victor’s parents were called up by his teacher because Victor had got into a fight at school. His teacher had noticed Victor’s behaviour and work attitude changing downwards in the past two months. Before that, he had been a model student.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡相应位置作答。
Upon hearing the teacher’s feedback, Victor’s parents got lost in thought.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Victor realized that his parents still cared for him.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3 . Imagine that you are a detective at the scene of a crime. What you find is confusion. Evidence has been moved, stepped on, broken. You even suspect that someone took crucial items as souvenirs! This would make your job much more difficult, right?
Archaeologists are like detectives. We study clues left by people long ago and learn a lot about them: their culture, their environment, where they came from, and where they went. Anything made or modified by people is an artifact(文物).
Archaeological sites are important to our cultural heritage. Laws protect them against damage by neglect, vandalism, or looters(掠夺者). Laws also help to preserve sites on public land.
What if you find an artifact- -maybe an arrowhead, a piece of pottery, or an old cowboy spur --in your backyard?
Then contact your state’s historic preservation officer or an archaeologist at a nearby college or university. These experts can help explain what you found.
| A．If possible, leave it in place. |
| B．Also investigate the history of where you live. |
| C．Is the ground disturbed by construction or digging? |
| D．As such, they are part of the archaeological record. |
| E．It might make it even impossible to solve the case. |
| F．It just might be a missing piece in history’s grand puzzle! |
| G．But private landowners have the rights to their own property. |
4 . New England holds some special museums. They are devoted largely or entirely to the work of just one person. And they are the artists’ birthplaces or onetime homes. Here are four examples of such museums.
Cyrus E. Dallin Art Museum
The name Cyrus E. Dallin (1861-1944) might not be familiar, but several of the artist’s sculptures (雕塑) are, especially those related to Native Americans. A good example is his “Appeal to the Great Spirit” standing in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. Born in Utah, he lived in Arlington for the final four decades of his life. The museum is in the Jefferson Cutter House, an 1830 Greek styled building.
Norman Rockwell Museum
Rockwell (1894-1978) was America’s well-known artist. The museum, founded in 1969, moved into its present location, Robert A.M. Stern-designed building in 1993. Its 998 paintings and drawings are the largest single collection of Rockwell's artworks.
Kids 16 and under: free; adults: $20; the old: at a 10% discount (折扣)
Edward Gorey House
Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was an artist, but he was also an author and clothes designer. Gorey bought this 18th-century house in 1979 and lived there for the rest of his life. Edward Gorey House is also known as the Elephant House. Gorey had respect for animals. The activities of the house, from art education to exhibits, show Gorey's support of animal well-being.
Gibert Stuart Birthplace and Museum
Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) is responsible for what may well be the most familiar work of any American artist, His drawing of George is the basis of the first president’s portrait (画像) on the dollar. Stuart painted more than a thousand portraits throughout his life.
1. What do we know about Cyrus E. Dallin?| A．He built the Jefferson Cutter House. |
| B．He lived in Arlington for half a century. |
| C．He was best known for his Greek styled sculptures. |
| D．He created famous works related to Native Americans. |
| A．$36. | B．$40. | C．$60. | D．$72. |
| A．Edward Gorey House. | B．Norman Rockwell Museum. |
| C．Cyrus E. Dallin Art Museum. | D．Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum. |
Paula is a 55-year-old woman living in New Jersey. She lives a happy life without concern for financial or social problems and she constantly shares laughs with her family and friends. About ten years ago, her husband Michael gave her a gold ring with a diamond in it on their 20th wedding anniversary. She cherished it very much and wore it every day.
Having been married for almost 30 years, Paula had everything set for herself, and knew that her life in New Jersey was a thrilling one. One day, Paula was in the bathroom cleaning everything up, from the sink to the floor. She wanted to keep her house clean and beautiful. As soon as Paula finished washing the bathtub, she moved on to the part she feared most: the toilet. Wanting to get it out of the way, she quickly cleaned the inside of the toilet with a brush, and flushed (冲走) the soap away. After finishing, she felt there was something wrong, but she couldn’t think of what it was.
Paula’s heart skipped a beat when she noticed that her left ring finger felt a bit lighter. She slowly looked down at her ring finger, hoping that her treasured anniversary gift was still on it. She was frightened to see that it was lost. She didn’t notice that she flushed it down the toilet.
Paula said, “I must have flushed it down. It had been a little big on my finger, because it was winter time and my hands were smaller. I felt so bad about it. Sad and embarrassed.”
She couldn’t believe that she just let thousands of dollars go down the drain (下水道)，literally. She searched the bathroom and even the house, hoping that she just dropped it somewhere and forgot about it. She even took apart the toilet and searched the inside pipes with a flashlight, but in vain. Paula had no idea how to explain this to her husband. To buy the ring, Michael worked extra hard before the anniversary, so to tell him the bad news was unimaginable for Paula.
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。
She softly knocked on the door to their bedroom.
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After finishing her explanation, Paula wiped away her tears and waited for Michael to say something.
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6 . Travelling with some of your favourite people is an exciting experience. If done well, group travelling can be the most thrilling experience ever, filled with games, laughter, and unforgettable memories.
Ideas are usually exciting when they are fresh. The longer you delay, the more you’ll find excuses not to go. Let all interested parties meet as soon as possible to decide on dates, locations and budget. It’s best to plan the trip three or four months in advance.
Assign roles
For the trip to be successful, it has to be well organized. You’re going on a trip far from home, not the shopping mall. This is why the group should assign a leader who would be responsible for planning and organizing the trip.
Budget pool
Create a flexible itinerary（行程）
An easy way to create and share an itinerary is through Google Docs. Add the group members to the document and give them permission to edit it. Suggest one or two optional activities per day which do not require advance bookings, such as a local hike or museum.
| A．Start early. |
| B．Get fresh ideas. |
| C．So how do you plan for your group trip? |
| D．Collect a set amount from everyone before your trip. |
| E．Don’t forget to create room for something unexpected. |
| F．Also, divide the other responsibilities as they arise so that everyone participates. |
| G．The group leader generally keeps in contact with everyone, handling most of the detailed work. |
7 . On September 7, 1930, Yuan Longping was born in Beijing. Fluent in English, his mother often read Friedrich Nietzsche's works to him. Influenced by his mother, Yuan Longping liked English, geography and chemistry at school. After graduating from university, he became a teacher in the countryside of Hunan in 1953.
With lots of crop failures, nationwide hunger hit China in the 1960s, making many people live a bad life. Yuan was sad and felt he must do something. Since the climate in Hunan was not friendly to growing wheat. He decided to devote himself to studying how to increase the production of rice, a basic food for over 60 percent of Chinese people. From then on, he began a lifelong connection with rice.
Yuan Longping succeeded in growing the world's first high production hybrid rice (杂交水稻) variety in 1973, which could reach a yield of over 500 kg per more than 200 kg than before. For the next four decades, he continued to work on the research of hybrid rice. In 2020, hybrid rice developed by his team achieved 1,500 kg per mu in two growing seasons, a new world record.
Nowadays, the hybrid rice is grown in almost half of China's rice fields and its production accounts for 60 percent of the total rice production in China. The hybrid rice production is 20 percent more than the common kinds , the yearly increase of which feeds up to 100 million people.
In 2019, Yuan Longping, known as the “Father of hybrid rice”, was awarded with Medal of the Republic, China's highest honor.
Yuan Longping's biggest dream in life was to develop more hybrid rice varieties, which could be grown all over the world to help solve the global food problem. So far, the hybrid varieties he developed have been grown in over 40 countries, including the USA, Brazil and India.
1. What do we know about Yuan Longping according to the text?| A．He began to study hybrid rice in 1973. |
| B．He received the highest honor in China at 90. |
| C．He ever taught math in the city after graduation. |
| D．He ever hoped Chinese would be free from hunger. |
| A．By listing figures. | B．By quoting reports. |
| C．By imagining results. | D．By explaining reasons. |
| A．Patient and honest. | B．Energetic and athletic. |
| C．Capable and remarkable. | D．Humorous and adventurous. |
| A．The life of Yuan Longping. | B．The team of Yuan Longping. |
| C．The honor of Yuan Longping. | D．The education of Yuan Longping. |
8 . Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (麻省理工学院) have turned spider webs into music——creating an strange soundtrack that could help them better understand how the spiders output their complex creations and even how they communicate.
The MIT team worked with Berlin-based artist Tomas Saraceno to take 2D (two- dimensional) laser (激光) scans of a spider web, which were linked together and made into a mathematical model that could recreate the web in 3D in VR (virtual reality). They also worked with MIT’s music department to create the virtual instrument.
“Even though the web looks really random (随机)，there actually are a lot of inside structures and you can visualize (可视化) them and you can look at them, but it’s really hard to grasp for the human imagination or human brain to understand all these structural details,” said MIT engineering professor Markus Buehler, who presented the work on Monday at a virtual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Listening to the music while moving through the VR spider web lets you see and hear these structural changes and gives a better idea of how spiders see the world, he told CNN. “Spiders use vibrations (振动) as a way to locate themselves, to communicate with other spiders and so the idea of thinking really like a spider would experience the world was something that was very important to us as spider material scientists,” Buehler said.
Spiders are able to build their webs without shelves or supports, so having a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of advanced new 3D printing techniques. “The reason why I did that is I wanted to be able to get information really from the spider world, which is very weird and mysterious,” Buehler explained. In addition to the scientific value, Buehler said the webs are musically interesting and that you can hear the sounds the spider creates during construction. “It’s unusual and eerie and scary, but finally beautiful.” he described.
1. What have MIT scientists done according to the passage?| A．They have translated spider webs into sounds. |
| B．They have made a mathematical model to produce webs. |
| C．They have created a soundtrack to catch spiders. |
| D．They have known how spiders communicate. |
| A．Their structures are beautiful and clear. |
| B．Professor Markus Buehler knows them well. |
| C．The American Chemical Society presents the result. |
| D．They are complex for people to figure it out. |
| A．virtual reality | B．printing |
| C．painting | D．film-making |
| A．It tells us that the music created by spiders is scary. |
| B．It shows how the researchers carry out the experiment. |
| C．It presents a new and creative way to study spiders. |
| D．It explains why scientists did the experiment. |
A MOTHER’S DAY SURPRISE
The twins were filled with excitement as they thought of the surprise they were planning for Mother’s Day. How pleased and proud Mother would be when they brought her breakfast in bed. They planned to make French toast and chicken porridge. They had watched their mother in the kitchen. There was nothing to it. Jenna and Jeff knew exactly what to do.
The big day came at last. The alarm rang at 6 a.m. The pair went down the stairs quietly to the kitchen. They decided to boil the porridge first. They put some rice into a pot of water and left it to boil while they made the French toast. Jeff broke two eggs into a plate and added in some milk. Jenna found the bread and put two slices into the egg mixture. Next, Jeff turned on the second stove burner to heat up the frying pan. Everything was going smoothly until Jeff started frying the bread. The pan was too hot and the bread turned black within seconds. Jenna threw the burnt piece into the sink and put in the other slice of bread. This time, she turned down the fire so it cooked nicely.
Then Jeff noticed steam shooting out of the pot and the lid starting to shake. The next minute, the porridge boiled over and put out the fire. Jenna panicked. Thankfully, Jeff stayed calm and turned off the gas quickly. But the stove was a mess now. Jenna told Jeff to clean it up so they could continue to cook the rest of the porridge. But Jeff’s hand touched the hot burner and he gave a cry of pain. Jenna made him put his hand in cold water. Then she caught the smell of burning. Oh dear! The piece of bread in the pan had turned black as well.
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。
As the twins looked around them in disappointment, their father appeared.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The twins carried the breakfast upstairs and woke their mother up.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________10 . Tips for Submitting a Good Letter of Recommendation
If you consider applying for any colleges abroad, one of the most important parts is the recommendation letter. Its purpose is to give universities a complete picture of you.
But a credible (可信的) reference saying you’ve consistently worked hard on a project can be the difference between getting accepted or rejected.
Choose the right references
Universities want to know how well you work under pressure and how you react to criticism, basically your characteristics, abilities and mentality. A good referee (推荐人) should have a solid professional relationship with you and be able to communicate your academic and personal strengths.
Most universities ask for two recommendation letters. They are regularly split between a school professor and an extracurricular (课外的) source. Undoubtedly, it’s good to show your skills in the subject you want to study.
Time
Professionals can sometimes find it hard to make time for writing recommendations.
Clear goals
Don’t be afraid to ask your referees to include certain qualities or examples you want to highlight. You should inform at least one of your referees about your career goals, grades and recent projects. They may not be referenced. But giving referees additional evidence to back up their points can make the letter more convincing.
| A．Make sure to know more about your university. |
| B．You can write that you’re hard-working yourself. |
| C．They can be quite occupied during application season. |
| D．The more information you include, the better it may be. |
| E．Don’t forget to check each university’s guidelines for reference letters. |
| F．Examples of how you have demonstrated them are needed to add more credibility. |
| G．But other abilities that may not be apparent in the classroom can be equally valuable. |
