1 . When 12-year-old Erica Fernandez volunteered to help clean up the beach in her new hometown, Oxnard, California, she could barely speak English. She was just a kid helping 20 adults take care of the beach. She and her family had recently arrived in California from a small town in Mexico.

Erica started going door to door in her mainly Spanish-speaking farmworker community. “I always loved the ocean,” she says, “so it made me really sad to see this beautiful beach full of trash. That’s why I decided to help.”

Erica cared too much to stay silent. Having grown up in a tiny town in the Mexican state of Michoacán, she had a strong motivation to care for nature. “We grew our own food and raised our own animals. Taking care of nature was part of survival.” She wanted to bring that same spirit to her new life in California.

As her English improved, she talked to kids in her high school about what was going on. “I didn’t know if they would listen to me. My English wasn’t good and I was only sixteen,” she says. As she nervously approached the microphone, she was informed that time was running out. One minute and thirty seconds was all she had. “I couldn’t give my prepared speech, so I just spoke from my heart.”

The result was electrifying. When Erica was finished, people stood up and broke into applause. One of the teachers said, “I’m very moved by your words, Erica. When I was your age, I was playing video games.”

Only the second person in her family to go to college, Erica wants to become an environmental lawyer so she can fight for the environment and for the rights of communities. She wants other young people to speak out when they see something wrong, even if they feel shy about it at first. “We are the future. The future is ours.”

1. Why did the author mention Erica’s words in Paragraph 2?

A．To show gratitude to her action.	B．To advocate learning from her.
C．To clarify the reason for her help.	D．To think highly of her devotion.

2. According to the passage, what can we learn about Erica?

A．She was the only college student in her family.

B．She volunteered to clean up the garbage on Spanish beaches.

C．She spent her childhood in a small town in Mexico.

D．She couldn’t speak either English or Spanish in California.

3. What do we know about Erica’s speech?

A．The device disturbed her performance.

B．The audience was greatly encouraged.

C．It affected people’s attitude to playing games.

D．Erica expressed her inner thoughts fluently.

4. From which is this text most probably taken?

A．A geography textbook.	B．A health report.
C．A scientific website.	D．An environmental magazine.

2 . During Thanksgiving dinner, my grandmother would ask us to share a story of a person we were grateful to during the past year. And then she would ask, “Did you ________ that person?” She encouraged us to show our gratitude by our ________.

I will always remember the warm and happy ________ I had as a child, the miracle of being at my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table, eating her food, and listening to those I ________ tell what they were thankful for. I believe it made a big ________ in my life. It helped all of us shift from being ________ focused to being externally focused.

When I got married and Jesselie and I started our own Thanksgiving ________, a few memories ________. We used to live in Piedmont, California when our children were still young. To give Jesselie time to ________ the dinner without ________, I took the children over to San Francisco to look at the beautiful holiday windows. Our children have always remembered that ________, and Jesselie has never ________ that Thanksgiving dinner because as we sat down to a cornucopia (丰富) of ________, including Williamsburg sweet potato pudding and sausage stuffing, our children said, “Can we just go to get a hamburger instead?”

I hope all of us can start a new tradition — a tradition of assessing our lives and actions, ________ our unconscious biases (偏见), and committing to be more ________ and better appreciate our differences.

1.

A．like

B．thank

C．encounter

D．inform

2.

A．support

B．principle

C．actions

D．negotiations

3.

A．feelings

B．vacations

C．parties

D．comments

4.

A．loved

B．greeted

C．invited

D．helped

5.

A．point

B．turn

C．mess

D．difference

6.

A．intentionally

B．entirely

C．internally

D．frequently

7.

A．challenges

B．traditions

C．discussions

D．standards

8.

A．died down

B．got along

C．stood out

D．took off

9.

A．fix

B．enjoy

C．share

D．deliver

10.

A．delay

B．permission

C．hesitation

D．interruption

11.

A．gift

B．reminder

C．discovery

D．experience

12.

A．missed

B．promised

C．touched

D．forgotten

13.

A．purchase

B．food

C．fruits

D．colors

14.

A．removing

B．explaining

C．representing

D．assessing

15.

A．regular

B．influential

C．inclusive

D．relaxing

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。

Though traveling is not a big deal for me today, before my trip to the mountains, I used to be a homebody. I had friends to hang out with, several hobbies, and I felt completely comfortable spending weeks or even months in my hometown — or sometimes even on my block — without going anywhere. All my demands of novelty were satisfied by the Discovery and National Geographic channels, and I seriously thought there was no difference between seeing something on the TV and with one’s own eyes.

The situation changed when one day David, my best friend who always has a couple of colorful bugs in his head (or, in other words, was always carrying out several crazy plans at once), walked into my room and declared his disgust (厌恶) for civilization. I will not describe how he managed to persuade me to join him on his journey to the Rocky Mountains; all I will say is that we departed in five days. This was my first time in the mountains, so I was turning my head in all directions. Unfortunately, the weather was foggy most of the time, and the higher we got into the mountains, the worse the visibility was.

Even despite this fact, I still enjoyed the hike — I felt like I was Bear Grylls, whose show I used to watch with excitement: in the wild, with food and water in my backpack, carrying a flashlight and a knife. On the first day, we were making our way along the foothills; but the next day, we started to climb on one of the peaks. Though it was not that steep and high, I was still excited. I regularly hastened, and because of that, I ran out of energy long before we got to the top; David, on the other hand, was more well-paced.

When we finally got to the top, nothing had changed. The same fog was covering the surroundings, and even though I was filled with positive emotions, I felt disappointed, because I counted on seeing the view from above and perhaps being able to take some photos.

注意：1.续写词数应为150个左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

We spent a couple of hours on the top, and decided to turn back.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Seeing all this scenery with my own eyes was truly an eye-opening experience for me.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7 . Do you wish you could create something meaningful? Do you wish you had the time to work on that thing you’ve always wanted to produce — that novel, that piece of art and that passion project?     1    . Based on my experience, I’ve written a guide to get you started.

Look at yourself in the mirror. It’s time for you to be honest with yourself. Either you’re accomplishing what you want to accomplish or you’re not.     2    . If it’s the latter, then you must admit to yourself that you are the only person preventing you from pursuing your passion project. The first step is looking in the mirror and admitting that you haven’t even scratched the surface on creating something meaningful.

    3    . Make a list of everything that distracts（使分心） you. Surfing the net too much? Get rid of the Internet at home. Are certain people draining（耗尽） all your time? Get rid of your unpleasant relationships. Are material possessions getting in the way? Get rid of your crap.

Stop worrying. We tend to worry about the naysayers（拒绝者）. People are going to judge you. Some people are going to think what you’re doing is stupid. Others will think you’ve lost your mind.     4    . So, instead of thinking about their opinions all the time, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Change your beliefs. One of the biggest reasons we don’t accomplish what we set out to accomplish is our limiting beliefs. For years you’ve told yourself that you’ll never be this, you’ll never do that, or you’ll never be good enough. But you’re no different from the people who have constructed their masterpieces. The people who create something special — something lasting — aren’t necessarily smarter or funnier or better or more attractive than you.     5    , and through this belief they didn’t let anything stand in their way.

A．Stop making excuses

B．There is no in-between

C．Kill things getting in your way

D．They simply believed they could do it

E．No need to keep wishing your life away

F．However, their perspectives hold no significance

G．Most people are going to praise you for what you do

8 . While they were still growing up, kids are basically vacuums for vocabulary. It is estimated that a normal kid at the age of 6 possesses a remarkable vocabulary of about thirteen thousand words!

That’s an amazing accomplishment because preliterate children just perceive spoken words and do not have a chance to work on those words. Rather, they learn a fresh vocabulary every 2 hours when awake, regularly. This is particularly extraordinary since the best effective ways for mnemonic devices（记忆术） do not assist with words individually.

A mnemonic has been a training method that changes what we wish to recall to more unforgettable things. For instance, if you desire to get an education on reading music, an easy approach to learning the EGBDF has been recalling the sentence Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. However, that doesn’t apply to individual words. Due to the lack of simple methods to recall words, children’s brains need to have an inherent（固有的）, strong structure for fast learning a language.

But, as we become older, we start to miss those remarkable skills. Every adult finds it difficult at the time of learning a different tongue, as the ability seems to decline with age. A psychologist, Elisa Newport, did research on people who immigrated（移民） to the US. She discovered that the people who immigrated in the age range of 3 — 7 had been as expert in the grammar of English as those who were US-born. But those who arrived in the age range of 8 — 15, did much worse.

A similar thing can be noticed at the time of learning the initial language. In the past, a small number of kids were raised with no human touch, regularly as a result of negligence. They are called the “wolf children”, similar to “Genie”, the girl who was found at the age of 13 around 1970. Since she was raised with no human touch, she could not create even simple grammatical sentences.

1. Which word can best describe preliterate kids’vocabulary learning?

A．Formal.

B．Complex.

C．Consistent.

D．Tough.

2. What’s the disadvantage of the mnemonic in terms of music reading?

A．It can be easily forgotten by little kids.	B．It involves only letters and listening ability.
C．It is actually meaningless to most people.	D．It can’t be used to recall individual words.

3. What’s psychologist Elisa Newport’s new finding?

A．People’s language abilities decline as they age.

B．3 — 7 is a better age range for learning a new language.

C．Kids lose their interest in grammar as they grow older.

D．Kids aged 8 — 15 can’t learn a foreign language well.

4. What does Genie’s example seem to indicate?

A．It’s better to immigrate to learn a foreign tongue.

B．It’s urgent to learn a language at the proper age.

C．Every animal possesses a language of their own.

D．A language can be acquired without human touch.

9 . It is no accident that so many fairy tale characters find themselves having to cross dangerous areas of woodland. In a most practical sense, as the ancients dreamed up those stories and even when the oral traditions were finally written down in the middle ages and later, the lands of northern and western Europe were thick with woodland. The dangers were obvious: from robbers lying in wait for unsuspecting travelers to opportunistic wolves hungry for the kill.

In many cultures, the forest is for god or ancestor worship. In An Illustrated Encyclopaedia Of Traditional Symbols, JC Cooper writes, “Entering the Dark Forest or the Enchanted Forest is a threshold (门槛) symbol: the soul entering the dangers of the unknown; the world of death; the secrets of nature, or the spiritual world which man must go through to find the meaning.”

The forest is a place of magic then, magic that can be dangerous, but also a place of opportunity and transformation. In the tale of Beauty and the Beast, the merchant is directed by invisible forces within the forest to the Beast’s castle, only then to be directed by invisible hands to his fate.

As for Little Red Riding Hood, straying from (偏离) the path and into the woods is similarly dangerous and filled with treachery (背叛). Symbolically, those who lose their way in the uncharted forest are losing their way in life, losing touch with their conscious selves and voyaging into the state of the subconscious.

And yet, in legends such as Robin Hood, or the great Hindu love story of Rama and Sita, the forest becomes a hiding place. The forest provides refuge (庇护) for great heroes who after a period of hard time come back to fight for justice. Their time in the forest could perhaps be interpreted as a period of personal development.

Today, still, woodland remains as a refuge from institutional order, from control and limitation of personal freedom. Forests are places full of mystery, where imagination and the subconscious can run free, where we can return to our original selves.

1. What does the author think of the woodland dangers in fairy tales?

A．They are created without reasonable basis.	B．They are a reflection of real-life dangers.
C．They differ greatly from those in real life.	D．They are apparent and can be easily avoided.

2. What does JC Cooper stress with her words in paragraph 2?

A．The hidden dangers in the forest.	B．The symbols in different cultures.
C．The symbolic meaning of the forest.	D．The educational functions of the forest.

3. The woodland plays the role of a shelter for the hero in ______.

A．Rama and Sita

B．Beauty and the Beast

C．Little Red Riding Hood

D．An Illustrated Encyclopaedia Of Traditional Symbols

4. How is the text developed?

A．By following time order.	B．By giving examples.
C．By making comparisons.	D．By explaining a principle.

10 . As someone who often mans the 24-hour hotline, I’m accustomed to early morning calls reporting various marine mammal strandings (搁浅). Even still, I doubt whether I could have fully prepared for this call. August 9 at 8: 01 am was the first time my jaw physically dropped when manning the hotline. The harbormaster reported 30 stranded dolphins in one of the trickiest areas of Wellfleet. I immediately sent all workers we had and sent out the call for any additional help we could gather.

Our team gathered at our Rescue Operations Center, grabbing all the specialized equipment we possibly could. Our trained volunteer responders arrived on the scene shortly after the initial report to give me updated information — 45 dolphins in total, 43 of which were alive. With a stranding this large, it wasn’t feasible to pull all 43 animals from the mud, get them to our mobile veterinary clinic, and transport them for release at a more favorable open-ocean location all before the tide came in. The day was getting hotter, and the animals were already suffering from both heat and sun exposure.

Upon getting on the scene, there was no time to react to the sheer chaos that lay ahead. After a quick scan of the situation — 45 animals widely distributed, only a few staff members and several volunteers — there wasn’t a second more to wait. We began the hard process of getting as many animals as we could into special slings (吊带), onto the cart, and off the marsh as quickly as possible. This was not without its own challenges. The mud trapped and enveloped our feet, adding weight with each step, most animals were highly fractious (易怒的) when approached, and the heat became unbearable in dry suits. But none of that was going to stop us from doing all we could for these animals.

1. How did the author react to the call on the morning of August 9?

A．He thought it was a joke.	B．He was shocked to the bone.
C．He didn’t take it seriously.	D．He was at a loss what to do.

2. What does the underlined word“feasible”in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Efficient.

B．Practical.

C．Urgent.

D．Remarkable.

3. What made a challenge to the author’s team?

A．The tide was coming in very quickly.

B．It was hard to find an open-ocean location.

C．The volunteers failed to contact each other.

D．There was deep mud around to walk through.

4. What’s the text mainly about?

A．A rescue effort.	B．A volunteer program.
C．A festive activity.	D．A charity organization.