1 . Why is George late?

A．He missed the bus.

B．His bike broke down.

C．He had to change clothes.

2 . It’s a known fact that emissions from gas-powered vehicles are harming the atmosphere. In response to this, Porsche, the German sports car brand, began a pilot program of producing e-fuels in Chile last year. Currently, e-fuels will be used only in sports cars at Porsche’s performance and experience centers.

E-fuels are made by passing electricity through water. The electricity separates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen is then mixed with CO2 to produce liquid e-fuels. E-fuels can be produced using many renewable energy sources, such as solar energy and wind. They follow the chemical structure of gasoline, making it possible for gas-powered cars to run on e-fuels with little to no modification.

E-fuels are preponderant (占优势的) over gas. E-fuels can help ease the change away from gas-powered cars, for those who may not be able to afford electric vehicles (EVs). They will also help to reduce waste by keeping gas-powered cars in service. Additionally, the use of e-fuels will not require new infrastructure to be built unlike EVs.

Existing gas stations and cars will be able to stay in use, which is already a big saving. However, opinions differ on whether e-fuels are truly eco-friendly. E-fuels are widely said to be nearly carbon neutral, although an independent study indicates that e-fuels release the same amount of CO2 as gasoline. Since e-fuels are still being developed and tested, their true impacts are still unknown.

E-fuels are very expensive to produce, partly due to energy loss during production. Unfortunately, only about 50% of the energy used in producing e-fuels is actually transformed into fuels. Additionally, only about 16% of the energy used in e-fuel production is actually used to power the car.

Even though the use of e-fuels will keep existing infrastructure, it will still take time and money to include it in everyday life. Currently the price of c-fuels is nearly double the cost of regular fuels. Though opinion is divided on e-fuels, with more testing and development, they have been considered as another way to help fight against the climate crisis by many researchers.

1. What can we learn about e-fuels?

A．They were tested in Germany at first.	B．They are applicable to gas-powered cars.
C．They were produced relying on solar energy.	D．They need to be mixed with CO2 in actual use.

2. What’s paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．E-fuels are greater than gas.	B．E-fuels are rich in gas.
C．E-fuels are dependent on gas.	D．E-fuels are equal to gas.

3. What do the figures in paragraph 5 mainly indicate?

A．EVs have enjoyed much popularity.	B．The cost of e-fuels will go down gradually.
C．There are many difficulties in advertising e-fuels.	D．The efficiency of e-fuels is lower in powering cars.

4. What is the author’s attitude towards e-fuels?

A．Positive.

B．Scared.

C．Objective.

D．Doubtful.

3 . Freudenfreude closely resembles positive empathy(共情)—the ability to experience someone else’s positive emotions.     1     It can also help people co-operate during a conflict and improve life satisfaction. If you’re interested in enjoying more freudenfreude, try the tips below.

Show active interest in someone else’s happiness.

One way to send good feelings for others is to ask questions. This practice is called shoy, or sharing joy. To start, invite the bearer of good news to discuss the experience. When listening, be sure to maintain eye contact and listen attentively, which can motivate you to keep going.     2    

View individual success as a communal effort.

“No one gets to the top alone, and when we elevate others, we’re often earned up with them,” Anhalt says. Jean Grae, an artist and self-identified “multipotentialist” supports friends and colleagues by adopting this mindset. When someone gels a new opportunity or reaches a milestone, she makes sure to celebrate.     3     “It’s truly inspirational,” she says, “because it lifts us all up and makes us shine.”

    4    

Because emotions are infectious, showing appreciation can increase freudenfreude for the gratitude giver and the receiver. In this way, you can think of freudenfreude as something you can spread when you’re experiencing personal joy.

Turn into a joy spectator.

“Too often, we think of joy passively,” Franco says. “We see it as something that comes to us, instead of something we can generate.” But you don’t need to wait for someone else’s good news to exercise freudenfreude.     5     You might ask: “What was the bright spot of your day?” or “what’s the best thing that happened to you this week?”. Asking about other people’s wins turns you into a joy spectator, giving you a chance to witness them at their best.

A．Become a popular organizer.

B．Show credit for your successes with others.

C．Empathy isn’t always an automatic reaction.

D．It motivates kind acts, such as helping others.

E．It even makes you feel as if your efforts will pay off.

F．Cultivate joy by inviting others to share their victories.

G．She says she’s especially moved when anyone considered “other” succeeds.

4 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

It was my very first trip to Africa. We were driving along a track that skirted the southern bank of the Chobe River, when my friend suddenly noticed something up ahead — a large shape jammed in-between a couple of big trees, right beside the road. We edged the car closer and, to our surprise, found ourselves looking at a young calf snuggled (偎依) up against a sizeable elephant (most probably its mother).

Our dilemma now was this: Was it OK to just drive slowly past the pair of elephants on that narrow track? Or would that cause the mother to become upset and charge, in which case we should either wait for them to move on or turn the car around? A bit unnerved by the close encounter, we chose to head back the way we’d come.

In the following days, I had a number of conversations with national park staff and fellow travelers about what to do when you suddenly come across an elephant while driving in the African wilds.

Sometimes people told me it would be OK to slowly drive past the mother and calf, because the wild animals of Chobe have become pretty used to humans in cars. Elephants seldom pose a threat to us. So there’s no need to adopt an attitude of permanent near-panic calm decisiveness is your true ally (助手) in such situations.

But then sometimes I was told to switch off the car and wait until the elephant had departed the scene. The idea was that the rumble (隆隆声) of an automotive engine could be interpreted by the animal as a kind of challenge. Keeping silent would reassure the elephant that you weren’t going to cause any trouble, and eventually it would go on its merry way. OK, that also sounded reasonable enough.

A week later, my friend and I were driving by a river, watching elephants meet on the water for a drink, and were driving back to our lodge (度假小屋) when we found our route blocked by a young male elephant. As surprised as we were, the elephant planted his feet in the dirt and seemingly prepared to fight against our car.

注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。

The track was narrow and bordered by thick bush, so we couldn’t go around him.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The elephant walked right up to the car.     

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5 . 每年的 12 月 5日是国际志愿者日(International Volunteer Day)。作为校志愿者协会(School Volunteer Association)主席，请你用英语在志愿者日发表国旗下讲话，内容包括：

1. 向校志愿者表示感谢；

2. 志愿服务的好处；

3. 发出呼吁。

注意: 1. 词数 80 左右；

2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

Dear teachers and schoolmates,

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

    1     (create) in 2010, Chinese Language Day was designated to celebrate multilingualism and cultural    2     (diverse), and promote the equal use of the six official languages within the United Nations.

The Confucius Institute at Ljubljana University in Slovenia held an event Thursday     3     (mark) the 14th annual Chinese Language Day. Nearly 300 people participated in the event, teachers, students, lovers of the Chinese language and culture, and overseas Chinese visitors     4     (include).

“The Chinese language is increasingly becoming the very bond     5     links friendly relations between China and the world,     6     (particular) Slovenia, and promotes mutual understanding and trust between Chinese and Slovenian people,” Chinese Ambassador to Slovenia Wang Shunqing said.

The Confucius Institute also     7     (organize) workshops, such as calligraphy, painting, tea art, cultural     8     (perform) and food tasting, to showcase traditional Chinese culture in an all-round way and to build a platform for people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and Slovenia.

    9     the end of 2021, more than 180 countries and regions around the world had offered education in Chinese language, more than 70 countries had included Chinese in their national education systems, and     10     number of people studying and using Chinese in countries other than China had reached 200 million, according to the United Nations statistics.

7 . Gail Rodgers, a grandma of three, has become a lifeguard at her local pool. Seeing her local pool couldn’t ________ due to a lifeguard shortage, the 66 year old woman decided that her ________ wouldn’t get in the way while helping her community. “I did this lifeguard thing back in the late ‘60s’.________ , I thought I can do this again,’’ she said.

Rodgers, ________ in the late 1960s, said she had to learn new skills. Jeff Blume, president of Cincinnati Pool Management and Rodgers’ boss, also admitted that the physical examination is ________. “Lifeguard candidates have to swim a 300 yard length, and then submerge (潜入水中) and grab a 10-pound brick off the bottom of the pool,” Blume explained.

Through great ________, Rodgers became a part time lifeguard.   “It’s been fun ________ people enjoying the nice weather in the pool. It’s been more ________ than I expected to be,” Rodgers said. Her boss said it has also been a joy to have her on their team.

Blume noted that fear can ________ a lot of people and he’s glad that Rodgers is such a(n) ________ for being courageous. “I think there’s a ________ of ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘That’s not for me. That’s for the young’ or something like that. So, there’s a lot to ________, but if people want to do it, we could help them with the skills and give them a little bit more of a________ before they actually take the class. If people ________ that is an option, I think they might not look at the skills test as a tall mountain to get over.”   They hope more people are inspired to ________ life-guarding as the country continues to face lifeguard shortages.

1.

A．spread

B．decrease

C．operate

D．change

2.

A．gender

B．age

C．behaviour

D．character

3.

A．However

B．Besides

C．Otherwise

D．Therefore

4.

A．trained

B．employed

C．identified

D．replaced

5.

A．fair

B．severe

C．brief

D．practical

6.

A．opportunities

B．achievements

C．efforts

D．choices

7.

A．keeping

B．catching

C．imagining

D．watching

8.

A．pleasant

B．convenient

C．effective

D．significant

9.

A．strike

B．control

C．threaten

D．restrict

10.

A．creation

B．inspiration

C．attraction

D．motivation

11.

A．horror

B．loss

C．relief

D．guilt

12.

A．doubt

B．deny

C．overcome

D．ignore

13.

A．reward

B．boost

C．try

D．taste

14.

A．complain

B．ensure

C．predict

D．recognize

15.

A．take up

B．make up

C．end up

D．pull up

8 . Lifelong learning and the Future of Work: Challenges and Opportunities

Our world is undergoing dramatic and transformative change technological, organizational, and climatic presenting new challenges to the future of work. These global trends are having a significant impact on skills.    1    . That is because skills acquired today may quickly become obsolete (淘汰的).

The concept of lifelong learning has been around for decades and the ILO (International Labour Organization) has adopted numerous normative instruments and policies related to lifelong learning.    2    . In the old days, we could say let’s go to school, get qualified for a job, enter the labour market and that’s the job of learning done. Now, people need to learn how to learn because learning is going to be a feature of the transitions they are going to go through throughout their lives.

Lifelong learning affects us all.     3     , from early childhood and basic education to adult learning and upskilling to take advantage of change. It is a global concept applying to developed and developing economies. And it requires the active engagement and support of governments, employers and workers.

    4    ? There’s no one size fits all strategy. But there are things we can do. Develop foundational and core work skills. Improve vocational guidance and labour market data. Recognize both formal and informal skills learning. Improve coordination and ensure equitable (公平的) access to learning.

Ultimately, lifelong learning is the key for people to be able to benefit from new ways of working.    5    .

A．Do I need to be active in lifelong learning

B．Many of today’s skills won’t match tomorrow’s jobs

C．How do we adapt lifelong learning to our new reality

D．It is central to managing the transitions we face over the life cycle

E．And it will light the path on our journey to a brighter future at work

F．It is easy to say that people need to keep learning throughout their careers

G．But the transformative change happening now is reshaping its definitions and giving it new importance

9 . Tonal languages use pitch (音调) to distinguish words that otherwise might sound the same. In Mandarin, for instance, mă means horse whereas mã means mother. Nontonal languages like Spanish sometimes include pitch changes to suggest emotion, for example, but not to change a word’s meaning.

As a Mandarin speaker and musician, Jingxuan Liu wondered about the crossover (融合) between language and music. While studying at Duke University, Liu helped analyze the musical abilities of nearly half a million people from 203 countries. Her colleagues had launched an online game in which participants completed several musical tasks, including identifying matching melodies at different pitches and finding beat tracks that fit songs’ rhythms.

On average, native speakers of the 19 represented tonal languages were better at the melody task compared with speakers of 29 nontonal languages. And the effect wasn’t small a tonal first language strengthened melodic understanding by about half the amount that music lessons did, which was also surveyed. But tonal languages speakers tended to be worse at the rhythm task.

Humans must be choosy about what they pay attention to. Pitch patterns are quite important in tonal languages, which might explain the balancing act in music. “You’ve got a finite resource of attention, and you’ve got to divide up that somehow,” says study coauthor Courtney Hilton, a scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Prior research on language and music often compared just two tongues, usually English and Mandarin. But other cultural influences, such as Eastern and Western music styles, could have affected results. By examining a wide range of people, the new study included languages never estimated in this way and reached more generalizable conclusion.

“Our result here is showing that the language someone speaks which is an important part of culture — also shapes cognition,” Hilton says.

1. Why did Liu’s colleagues launch the online game?

A．To attract more students to do the research.

B．To learn about different people’s musical abilities.

C．To confirm the role of music in people’s language learning.

D．To find the difference between tonal languages and nontonal ones.

2. What were native speakers of tonal languages better at than those of nontonal languages?

A．Finding beat tracks.	B．Suggesting emotion.
C．Distinguishing word meanings.	D．Figuring out matching melodies.

3. What does the underlined word “finite” in paragraph 4 mean?

A．Valued.

B．Limited.

C．Special.

D．Potential.

4. Which of the following words can best describe Liu’s study?

A．Ground-breaking.

B．Brain-washing.

C．Inefficient.

D．Unreliable.

10 . Most glitter(小发光物品), which is made up of tiny pieces of plastic, is a huge danger to the environment. “Everyone talks about the mountain of plastic floating in the ocean. You can grab empty bottles from the water, but with tiny pieces, it’s impossible,” says Victor Alvarez, a chemical engineer who sells an eco-friendly alternative to glitter.

In the early 2,000s, Alvarez worked for Mercedes-Benz in Germany, where he became fond of any technology that protected the environment. A few years after leaving Mercedes-Benz, he founded Blue Sun International in Miami, which makes specialty ingredients for the skin and hair care industries.

Glitter is a popular ingredient in cosmetics, such as eye shadows and lipsticks. So Alvarez began researching an alternative that didn’t contain plastic to make his products safer for the environment. That’s when he came across Ronald Britton Ltd., a company which had developed a plastic-free, biodegradable product called Bioglitter. It is made from regenerative cellulose(纤维素) sourced from hardwoods, primarily eucalyptus(桉树). Alvarez worked with the company to become the first retailer to sell Bioglitter in America. In 2018, he formed Today Glitter in order to sell the biodegradable glitter directly to consumers through its website.

Today Glitter sells two kinds of biodegradable glitter Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure. Both are almost plastic-free and can biodegrade in a short time. Meanwhile, they are as shiny as regular glitter. All these products are third-party tested by TÜV, an international organization that provides testing and certification for compostable (可降解的) and biodegradable products.

Despite its benefits, the hardwoods needed to make biodegradable glitter cause it to cost about twice as much as conventional glitter. A small glass container that contains just 6 grams of Bioglitter costs $10, while the same amount of regular glitter could cost at least half that amount. Alvarez expects the price will come down over time. He also expects the company’s sales to cross $1 million next year. But more importantly, Alvarez says, his main goal is to effect a meaningful change.

1. While at Mercedes Benz, Alvarez        .

A．developed a way to grab glitter in the sea	B．became interested in the environment
C．attempted to live a plastic-free life	D．created a kind of harmless glitter

2. What do we know about Bioglitter?

A．It is a plastic-free ingredient for eye shadows.

B．It will soon be on sale in the American market.

C．It is very difficult to break down in the wild.

D．It was invented by Blue Sun International.

3. Why does the author mention TÜV in the text?

A．To show Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure are popular.

B．To stress it provides a broad range of testing services.

C．To prove Today Glitter’s products are eco-friendly.

D．To explain many plastic products are low-quality.

4. What is the problem faced by Today Glitter at present?

A．The complex process of making glitter.	B．How to expand its overseas market.
C．How to attract potential investors.	D．The high cost of raw materials.