1 . When I was a child, the new year’s activity for my family is dumpling-making, but it’s been years since I’ve last experienced the uniquely carefree comfort and connection I felt during moments. My family has changed a lot, and gatherings like these simply don’t come together with the same ease as they once did.

This year, I came home in the evening to a dark house with pieces missing. I noticed things that I wouldn’t have before, like how my family slept earlier and got up later and how my dog had more trouble jumping up on my bed. After all, it’s easier to become blind to its subtle changes when you occupy it virtually every day of the year, and much harder when you must be exposed to months of accumulated change all at once.

Personally, the most precious childhood privilege is not the free extra snacks from flight attendants, but the privilege of thinking of the people and relationships around you with a sense of permanence. I mean this in the sense that it escaped my eight-year-old brain to think about how my parents were aging as I did or about the sacrifices they made for me until suddenly, I was an adult as they were.

I turn 20 in a couple months, so I’ve been seized with a feeling of adulthood, which feels far stronger than the transition into legal adulthood at 18 ever felt. It seems as if the “teen” part of“19”keeps me attached to the same category as the one my newly 13-year-old self occupied, carrying with it a certain comfort in the social allowances made for the immaturity inherent (固有的) to youth. But marching into 20 is different.

I’d so desperately wanted to move away and get a taste of independence upon starting college, but now I know that such freedom comes with loss and responsibility. Now I start to understand the governance of a circularity (循环) inherent to our lives and have a newfound appreciation for the things that remain the same.

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

A．Obvious.

B．Sudden.

C．Unusual.

D．Unnoticeable.

2. Which of the following might the author agree with when he was eight?

A．Everything would be the same.	B．His parents were becoming old.
C．Free extra snacks were common.	D．His parents had done a lot to him.

3. In what way is 20 years old different according to the author?

A．Physical maturity.	B．The social expectation.
C．The loss of freedom.	D．The shift into legal adulthood.

4. What can be the best title of the passage?

A．A newfound appreciation for life.	B．The difference between teens and adults.
C．My passing memories of childhood.	D．My reflection on the switch into adulthood.

2 . Art Appreciation

Art appreciation is an often overlooked skill. It’s more than simply looking at a piece of art and judging it based on what we see. It requires us to look deeper, beyond the surface into the artist’s intention.     1     The following tips would help you achieve it.

The first step is to prepare yourself mentally. Before you begin viewing any artwork, take moments to clear your mind of what a piece you think should look like.     2     That’s because an artist can present a unique visual experience by combining line, shape, form, color and space creatively.

Besides, examine the artwork closely. Take note of its elements mentioned above. Consider how these elements work together to convey meaning or emotion in the piece. Notice how the work makes you feel.     3     What can I see? What is the artwork saying? What feelings does it arouse in me?

    4     Information about the artist and when the artwork was created can help you uncover the deeper symbolism present in the work that may not be immediately evident. Art is often used as a tool for social change. To appreciate art, it’s important to understand the context where it was created. The context behind a piece can be found through research and analysis.

Last but not least, sharing opinions on art also helps. Try discussing your thoughts on artwork with friends or family who may have different opinions. Taking the diverse understanding into consideration, you can approach viewing art work from different viewpoints. As a result, you can gain a new appreciation every time you look at it.     5    

A．Relevant research counts as well.

B．Engage all your senses and ask yourself questions.

C．The process can bring you a fun and educational trip.

D．Leave your feelings aside and check out the questions.

E．To sum up, communication can also do good to your art appreciation.

F．With the previous ideas, you can get well prepared for the appreciation.

G．This will help you open up to different perspectives when exploring the work.

3 . 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。

Edward and Stephen were both eighteen years old. They were so together in friendship that they felt themselves to be brothers. They had known each other since childhood, growing up in the same block in Liverpool.

Edward was fair and lean, while Stephen was dark and short. Edward’s brown hair was always falling over his eyes, while Stephen wore his black hair in a natural style.

Each youngster had a dream of someday becoming champion of the world. Whenever they had time, the boys worked out at the Fencing (击剑) Club. Early morning sunrises would find them running along the Mersey River, wrapped in sweatshirts, with short towels around their necks.

Edward and Stephen studied hard and dreamt positively. Between them, they had a notebook filled with torn tickets of every fencing match they had ever attended. They each had taken part in many elimination bouts (淘汰赛) and had won many gold medals. The difference was in their style.

As fencers, Edward’s lean form and long reach made him better in attack, while Stephen’s short and muscular frame made him speed y in movement. Whenever they had met in the piste (击剑台), it had always been intense and competitive.

After a series of elimination bouts, they were informed that they were to meet each other in the finals next month —the winner to represent the Club in the Championship Tournament.

Fencing was like any other profession. The two boys knew friendship had nothing to do with it. But how would the competition affect their relationship? Everyday they continued to run together along the Mersey River. However, while joking with each other, they both sensed an invisible wall rising between them.

The day before the finals, they met as usual for their daily workout. After a mile or so, Stephen stopped.

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 think we both got something to say to each other.” Stephen said.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As the two went onto the piste, the audience held their breath.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6 . “If after the first 50 pages of a book you don’t get engaged, you’re allowed to stop reading and try again later when you feel ready for it,” my father told me.

My father holds this ______ responsible for his lifelong love of literature. As a busy labourer, he has regarded reading books as an almost sacred ______. He feels a strong, perhaps, irresistible ______ to read frequently and a lot.

I don’t think my father ______ to hand the advice down to me. He’s not the sort to give advice and I’m not the sort to ______ it. But I find it’s the advice that’s delivered ______ that.is most likely to be listened to.

I like this advice “reading first 50 pages”, for the generosity and respect it extends to a book’s ______ and their craft. A reader, it suggests, needs a little ______ to adapt to a book’s particular tone and voice. Meanwhile, this advice gives a person permission to ______ reading. Nobody, it implies, need force themselves to struggle through a book they’re not ______.

I particularly like the ______ advice to return to a book “when you feel ready for it.” It’s a ______ that reading is naturally relational and that the readers need time.

Even when I’m more than ready to stop reading by page 50, ______ the exercise feels worth doing. Just like stopping swimming halfway makes the muscles in my legs ache ______ it uses them in a different way from cycling. But in both cases, it’s a satisfying kind of hurt because it’s a ______ of getting stronger.

1.

A．warning

B．request

C．guarantee

D．advice

2.

A．debate

B．escape

C．beg

D．protest

3.

A．trend

B．view

C．urge

D．influence

4.

A．dared

B．forgot

C．hesitated

D．intended

5.

A．invite

B．write

C．drop

D．support

6.

A．safely

B．quickly

C．indirectly

D．personally

7.

A．reader

B．author

C．editor

D．publisher

8.

A．patience

B．luck

C．help

D．grace

9.

A．finish

B．teach

C．love

D．stop

10.

A．referring to

B．talking about

C．connecting with

D．commenting on

11.

A．strong

B．gentle

C．honest

D．timely

12.

A．recognition

B．duty

C．pity

D．wonder

13.

A．thus

B．just

C．then

D．still

14.

A．unless

B．because

C．once

D．before

15.

A．sign

B．rule

C．question

D．goal

7 . The teenage years are a transformative period marked by great physical, psychological, and emotional changes.     1     They refer to the feelings that arise during interactions with others, such as gratitude, shame, sympathy, guilt, and pride.

Understanding and managing social emotions can help develop teenagers’ identities. Teenagers experience a wide range of emotions from social interactions, which significantly influences their self-understanding and social awareness. In the process, they learn to understand, and appropriately respond to both their own emotions and those of others.     2    

In academic settings, social emotional competencies like self-regulation, motivation, and social awareness directly impact a teenager’s ability to learn, participate, and engage in school activities.     3     Teenagers with strong social emotional skills are better equipped to handle stress, resist peer pressure, and avoid risky behaviors, reducing the likelihood of developing mental health issues.

Learning social emotions involves a combination of personal experience, guidance, and formal education.     4     This environment influences teenagers’ earliest understanding of how to communicate and manage their emotions. They feel safe and supportive to express their emotions freely and learn to manage them without fear of judgment. Schools also play a significant role through social emotional learning programs that teach these skills in a structured environment. Community involvement, extracurricular activities, and peer (同伴) interactions offer additional opportunities for teenagers to practice and refine their social emotional skills.

    5     It contributes to a teenager’s ability to manage their own emotions, understand others’ emotions, and face social complexities. This learning is a cornerstone for shaping their identity, influencing their interpersonal relationships, academic success, mental health, and future life outcomes.

A．What exactly are social emotions?

B．The journey into mature emotion is quite easy.

C．Social emotion learning for teenagers is essential.

D．Central to this phase is the concept of social emotions.

E．This helps shape their own personal principles and beliefs.

F．Families play a crucial role in modeling and developing these skills.

G．Moreover, social emotional skills are closely linked to mental health.

8 . Every day, people share more than 2 billion photos on the Internet. While visual content provides a fun and expressive way for people to communicate online, consuming and creating it poses challenges for people who are blind or severely visually impaired (受损的). With more than 39 million people who are blind, and over 246 million who have a severe visual impairment, many people may feel excluded from the conversation around photos on the Internet. The researchers from Harvard University want to build technology that helps the blind community appreciate photos in the same way others enjoy them.

Automatic alternative text is a new development that generates a description of a photo using advancements in object recognition technology. People using screen readers on digital devices will hear a list of items a photo may contain as they click photos on the Internet. Before today, people using screen readers would only hear the name of the person who shared the photo, followed by the term “photo” when they came upon an image. Now they can offer a richer description of what’s in a photo thanks to automatic alternative text. For instance, someone could now hear “an image containing three people, smiling, outdoors”.

This is possible because of Harvard University’s object recognition technology, which is based on a network that has billions of parameters and is trained with millions of examples. Each advancement in object recognition technology means that the researchers will be able to make technology even more accessible to more people. When people are connected, they can achieve extraordinary things as individuals and as a community, and when everyone is connected, we all benefit from it.

They are launching automatic alternative text first on cellphone screen readers set to English, but they plan to add this functionality for other languages and platforms soon. While this technology is still nascent, using its current capabilities to describe photos is an important step toward providing our visually impaired community with the same benefits and enjoyment that everyone else gets from photos.

1. Why is the technology launched?

A．There are so many photos on the Internet.

B．There are many people suffering from blindness.

C．Some digital devices are in need of the technology.

D．People with vision problems fail to enjoy photos online.

2. What is the advantage of the technology over the previous one?

A．It can offer more photos to blind people.

B．It can describe more about online photos.

C．It can recognize the person who shares photos.

D．It can satisfy the common needs of blind people.

3. What is the key to promoting the technology?

A．The photos on the Internet.	B．People’s care for blind people.
C．People’s connections to each other.	D．The object recognition technology.

4. Which can best explain the underlined word “nascent” in the last paragraph?

A．Emerging.

B．Reliable.

C．Powerful.

D．Conventional.

9 . Clair Hughes first began to research money-saving ideas to get out of her £3,500 student overdraft (透支额). The shopper started surfing the Internet for discount coupons (优惠券) and cut price offers. Revealing how she seldom pays full price for an item, Ms Hughes says, “Discounts are always there; it’s just a matter of being organized. Before starting this, I thought it’d be much work, but now I’m so used to this lifestyle that it’s automatic to me. I must have easily saved over £15,000.”

Ms Hughes first focused on saving money back in 2010, when she moved in with her partner, Shane Byrne, a phone company trainer. After turning to the web for advice, she tried out a few clever money-saving tricks like switching her overdraft to a zero-interest account. Then, several years later, she came across an online community for “couponers” and decided to give it a go.

She started spending hours surfing the web for coupons, printing them all out to take with her whenever she went shopping. Over the years, she has managed to get some impressive catches. Once, two lamps worth £140 cost her just £35.

Two years ago, Ms Hughes also began using cashback apps where you are given money back on items ranging from beers to toiletries. After each shop, she uploads pictures of her receipts, which are then scanned, and money is given back on certain items.

Among her other top money-saving tips, Ms Hughes recommends taking part in paid online surveys, which have earned her hundreds in discount coupons. She says, “I’ve heard a lot about collecting other people’s abandoned receipts from shopping trolleys to check for missed discounts. I can’t believe how much coupons and cashback apps have helped me. The community does benefit me a lot. There will always be someone on hand to explain how it works.”

1. What does saving money mean to Clair Hughes?

A．It’s part of her daily life.	B．It makes her shop less.
C．It’s a way to leave school.	D．It keeps her work organized.

2. What can we know about Clair Hughes?

A．She always asks Shane for suggestions.

B．She likes going shopping with her friends.

C．She has bought some goods in low prices.

D．She is good at discussing prices with others.

3. What does the last paragraph mainly show?

A．Hughes’ feelings of her life.	B．Hughes’ ways to get coupons.
C．Hughes’ appreciation for society.	D．Hughes’ difficulty in saving money.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．A Graduate Enjoys Shopping	B．A Community Collects Coupons
C．A Woman Focuses on Saving Money	D．A Shopper Is Famous for Saving Money

10 . Four Nominees for the Best Picture of 2024 Oscar

Here are four nominees for the Best Picture of the 96th Academy Awards.

American Fiction

American Fiction is a comedy-drama film written and directed by Cord Jefferson. Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, it follows a frustrated novelist-professor who writes an outlandish satire of stereotypical “black” books. It was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the American Film Institute.

Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall is a 2023 French legal drama thriller film, directed by Justine Triet from a screenplay she co-wrote with Arthur Harari. It is about a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, which brings the audience fear. It was released theatrically in France by Le Pacte on 23 August, 2023.The film has won two awards at the Golden Globes.

Barbie

Barbie is a 2023 fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach. Based on the eponymous fashion dolls by Mattel, the film stars Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and follows the pair on a journey of self-discovery through both Barbie land and the real world.

The Holdovers

The Holdovers is a 2023 American comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne. The film is about a strict classics teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to look after a handful of students.

1. Anatomy of a Fall is a ____________ film.

A．war

B．horror

C．fantasy

D．disaster

2. Which film would a doll fan prefer to watch?

A．American Fiction.	B．Anatomy of a Fall.
C．Barbie.	D．The Holdovers.

3. What do the four films have in common?

A．They are comedy films.	B．They are American films.
C．They were based on screenplays.	D．They were released in the same year.