“You signed us up for what?” Lu’s eyes widened as Jamie grinned at her. “A charity bike ride. It’d be fun!” She stared at him open-mouthed. “Fun? But I haven’t ridden a bike for years, Jamie. And I hate exercise! How long is this ride?” Lu could feel her muscle shrinking at the mere thought of it.
“Only 20 kilometers.”
Lucinda swiped the brightly coloured leaflet advertising the bike ride from her husband’s hand. “Twenty kilometres? That’s a half marathon, Jamie!”
She tossed the leaflet back at him. “Well you can count me out. I’m not fit enough to run five minutes round the block, let alone hours on a bike.”
“But you will be in a couple of months. I thought we could train for it together.” Jamie patted his beer belly. “I’m not exactly in great shape at the moment. And you’ re always saying we don’t get to spend enough time together!” He gave her his best winning grin.
A smile fell across Lucinda’s lips. It was true, she was always saying that lately. Though spending her weekends cycling was not exactly what she’d had in mind.
A wave of sadness spun through her heart. The past few months had been... difficult. She had lost her job and was struggling to find a new one. Being at home, scrolling through job adverts and waiting for interview replies, had left her feeling stuck. Jamie had been working extra hours to support financially, but that only added to her guilt. Despite trying to stay positive, life had somehow skidded to a stop.
“I’m not sure,” Lu sighed.
“It’s not a race, but a joy ride, Lu.” Jamie reassured her, nudging her playfully. “Plus, I’ve already rented us a tandem bike(双人自行车)!”
“A tandem?” Lu’s eyes flashed with horror. “Are you mad?” She stared at him. “You’re not even joking, are you?” Doubts crept into her mind as she imagined the challenges of coordinating their movements on a shared bike.
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。
Actually, the first training session did not go well.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It seemed cycling had truly got their lives moving forward again.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . My mother was never truly happy in Connecticut finding the winter bitter cold and the culture provincial (偏狭的). Though she grew up in New Jersey, she moved to San Francisco in her early twenties, met and married my dad out there. After I was born, they decided to return east, closer to their own parents. But she never let go of her love for the Bay Area.
California was always part of the conversation when I was a kid. I ate meals off a map-of-the-world placemat (餐垫), and Mom taught me to identify San Francisco before I learned where Hartford was. She told us stories of perfection on a single city, fantasizing about retiring out west. My dad would play along, but his heart wasn’t in the same place.
While my mother’s status in the nonprofit world advanced, her desire to move back to her favorite place grew strong. She applied for jobs in the Bay, underwent bicoastal Skype screenings, even traveled out for a couple of interviews on a whim (心血来潮). Sometimes her cover letters disappeared, other times she made it down to the final two candidates. With each rejection, she promised to make her next job application even stronger.
This past May, I relocated from San Francisco to New York for a job. A few weeks later, Mom called me. Her pursuit had finally paid off. She’s been offered a vice president position at a public health nonprofit in Oakland. A few weeks later, she packed up her baggage and left Connecticut for good.
Our lives are more semblable than ever these days. We’re both discovering our new homes, making friends. We’re looking for a good yoga studio to join, reading the same books and chatting about the plots by text message. I emailed her photos from my trip to Burning Man and she replied with stories about her new coworkers who go every year. There’s even time for the occasional dating disaster.
Perhaps that’s the paradox (悖论) of growing older. Things will always change, and they can change immediately—my mother is proof. But an individual’s own power to create change always stays the same. Everything can change, and therefore nothing ever really changes.
Now when I’m out west for a visit, Mom meets me at a station with her big bag. We stop by the Grand Lake farmers market, picking out the freshest seasonal ingredients, before hiking up the hill to her new apartment. One of these days, I’ll actually cook her dinner.
1. What can we know about the author’s mother?| A．She always likes to struggle on her own. | B．Nothing can stop her from reaching her goal. |
| C．She owns a public health nonprofit company. | D．She takes everything of her daughter on herself. |
| A．Changeable. | B．Comfortable. | C．Similar. | D．Creative. |
| A．The relationship between the author and her mother is very good. |
| B．The author would not like to let her mother work on. |
| C．The author and her mother live in the same city at present. |
| D．The author would not like to change her life situation. |
| A．her family’s life always change because of her mother |
| B．the mother-daughter feelings will stay the same forever |
| C．she has grown up during her family’s constant moves |
| D．her mother always wants to change her current situations |
3 . “I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m playing a game with a friend, a guy named Scuzzball,” my 15-year-old son shouted from his room. “Oh, what is Scuzzball’s real name?” I asked. “I have no idea.” He said. “Where is he from?” I continued. He responded, “I think somewhere in Canada. Oh, wait, it doesn’t even matter because Scuzzball just left and he has been replaced with a robot.”
“Your friend is replaced by artificial intelligence?” “It doesn’t matter, Dad. It happens all the time! The game continues.” My son doesn’t mind playing with a person or a robot, which is typical of games these days. I wonder whether the face-to-face experience of friendship that I grew up with will be lost by our children.
Aristotle, a great thinker and educator, has pointed out that shallow friendship is easily formed but also easily abandoned because such bonds are fragile. Deep friendship, by contrast, is when you care for your friend for his sake, not for any benefit you can get. This is selfless friendship. You can have only a couple of these friends because they require lots of time and effort. You must make sacrifices for each other.
Presence in friendship requires “being with” and “‘doing for”. Perhaps the most defining feature of deep friendship is “doing for”, as my friend has my back in trouble or brings me soup when I’m sick. Only strong bonds have the power to motivate real sacrifices. But it is unclear why online “friends” would bother to do the hard work of friendship. When I asked my students whether they had people in their lives who would bring them soup when they were sick, they laughed at my Stone Age question and said they’d just order soup online themselves.
Digital life fills and absorbs waking life time so that people do not join in an example case of friendship, like sports, collective arts, free range childhoods, etc. In this way, digital life produces false friendships.
1. How does the author lead in the topic of the text?| A．By quoting famous mottoes. | B．By introducing an online game. |
| C．By showing robots’ irreplaceable role. | D．By presenting a parent-child conversation. |
| A．Impact of selfish friendship. | B．The meaning of deep friendship. |
| C．Selfless sacrifices in friendship. | D．The formation of shallow friendship. |
| A．Robots will have our back in trouble. |
| B．Virtual friends won’t make real sacrifices. |
| C．The students thought highly of the teacher’s question. |
| D．Ordering food online for friends is an example of “being with”. |
| A．Digitalized Friendship | B．The Benefits of Digital Life |
| C．Face-to-face Communication | D．The Sacrifices of Online Friends |
Undoubtedly, Mother Nature is always attractive to kids. In our childhood, how often did we turn a deaf ear to our parents’ advice? Very often! Thus, we landed ourselves in a situation where we greatly regretted our act of not having listened to the advice of the wise.
Such an unforgettable experience I had at the age of 7 gave me an invaluable lesson, after which I deeply understood why my gentle mother was repeating the boring suggestions and I would try to take her suggestions seriously.
In my childhood, I was so crazy about nature that even playing among the colorful flowers in our garden could make my day. Our house was next to the woods which had always stirred up(激起) great curiosity in me in wanting to find out what was within. Every time I saw fascinating butterflies dancing from the woods, my curiosity grew.
But my mother didn’t like me wandering off on my own and always ensured that I was within her sight. Even if she allowed me to explore the surrounding area on my own, it was only to be somewhere near the house. Being as curious as the cat, I always desired to explore the woods. It seemed as if my mother had understood my desire, so she had warmed me on lots of occasions never to enter the woods alone.
“Mom, can I go out and play in the garden?” I asked.
“Sure,” she would reply each time. “Kate, you can play in the garden but you must promise me one thing—only when I’m with you can you go into the woods. There are no cases of animal attacks on humans, but it’s still dangerous for a little kid like you. It’s too easy to get lost in the woods.”
“Sure, you’ve said that many times!” I answered without patience at her repeated reminders.
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。
However, curiosity got the better of me one morning.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Kate?” Behind the trees covered by the rays of the setting sun came my mother’s voice.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| A．Father and daughter. | B．Husband and wife. | C．Boss and secretary. |
1.表示歉意；
2.解释原因；
3.询问参赛情况。
注意：
1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1．人物简介;
2．成为朋友的原因。
注意：
1．词数：100左右;
2．短文的开头和结尾已为你写好，不计入总词数。
My Best Friend
A friend is someone to whom we can talk about everything. Without friends, our life would be dull and incomplete. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I really hope our friendship will last as long as possible.
8 . I’ve just read an interesting article. It says children of
When I was five, illness
Watching my mother work hard, I gradually developed a
| A．working | B．thinking | C．single | D．reliable |
| A．peacemakers | B．breadwinners | C．hosts | D．successes |
| A．absolutely | B．constantly | C．probably | D．fortunately |
| A．informed | B．convinced | C．reminded | D．robbed |
| A．landed | B．refused | C．offered | D．abandoned |
| A．dressed | B．raised | C．educated | D．influenced |
| A．independent | B．confident | C．intelligent | D．consistent |
| A．ignore | B．bear | C．attain | D．transform |
| A．got back | B．got through | C．took over | D．took on |
| A．secret | B．beauty | C．difficulty | D．possibility |
| A．intended | B．struggled | C．managed | D．prepared |
| A．complex | B．relaxed | C．general | D．positive |
| A．yet | B．still | C．even | D．again |
| A．faithful | B．close | C．subject | D．grateful |
| A．model | B．playmate | C．director | D．boss |
9 . In some parts of Central China’s Henan province, daughters will
Long ago, there was a girl living at the southern foot of the Songshan Mountain in Henan, who was very
Then she heard some weak voice and woke up again, seeing a couple of wild geese were staying in her bag and not willing to leave, so she took them with her. When she arrived at her parents’ home, the village was
After that, before each leap month, daughters began to visit their
In some parts of East China’s Shandong province, the married daughters will send dough-made fish and toad to their parents, which
| A．bury | B．send | C．prepare | D．decorate |
| A．book | B．song | C．title | D．legend |
| A．beautiful | B．filial | C．brave | D．smart |
| A．thought | B．warned | C．heard | D．reminded |
| A．repetitive | B．relevant | C．representative | D．respective |
| A．eventually | B．accidentally | C．hurriedly | D．mysteriously |
| A．taken | B．made | C．eaten | D．set |
| A．suffering from | B．learning from | C．taking from | D．recovering from |
| A．delight | B．death | C．penalty | D．performance |
| A．neighbors | B．plague | C．food | D．village |
| A．friends | B．relatives | C．parents | D．classmates |
| A．delicate | B．abnormal | C．outstanding | D．rare |
| A．pursuit | B．point | C．place | D．praise |
| A．symbolize | B．suspect | C．simplify | D．state |
| A．However | B．Therefore | C．Otherwise | D．Besides |
10 . It’s eight o’ clock on Christmas morning, and Uncle Tom says he wants to listen to the news. I am wondering why on earth grownups would be interested in the news when there are important things to be done, such as handing out presents. And then, while I am only half-listening to the radio broadcast, something surprising happens: The boring newsreader begins talking about a Christmas message from the Vatican. Hadn’t we heard that report earlier? My older brother, Colin, figures out what’s happening. “Pete, Pete, it’s a tape recorder! We’ve got our tape recorder!”
Colin and I had both been blind from birth. At the special boarding school in Worcester in western England that Colin and I attended, a tape recorder of your own was the height of aspiration. However, Colin—better informed and more realistic about family finances than I was—had no real expectations of getting one. I realized, much later, that the tape recorder my father had bought us would have cost more than four times his weekly wage.
The new toy, the size of a small suitcase, dominated the rest of the Christmas holidays. I took my first steps down the path to my career as a broadcaster when I returned to school after the holidays. I would wander round the school with my microphone, recording my thoughts in the style of the voices I heard on the radio. But ten years later, after I had started and abandoned a university law course, I drew on the confidence and walked into a BBC radio station, in the hope of selling myself as a broadcast journalist. A producer at the radio station who was putting together a weekly program for blind people had seen me. He later phoned me and informed I was admitted.
Twenty-five years later, I presented my first report for BBC TV’s Six O’Clock News, a program my father had never missed. Although by then he’d been dead for more than a decade, I like to think he’d have realized that his inspiring Christmas present had changed my life.
1. Why was the author surprised at the radio report according to paragraph 1?| A．Because he was handing out presents. | B．Because the information was familiar. |
| C．Because it broadcast the latest news. | D．Because it was reading a boring message. |
| A．It was inexpensive. | B．It was unnecessary. |
| C．It was unaffordable. | D．It was unexceptional. |
| A．He recorded his personal life every day. | B．He majored in broadcasting at university. |
| C．He got addicted and abandoned his study. | D．He decided to work in broadcast journalism. |
| A．Unusual Gift, United Family | B．Warm Christmas, Wise Uncle |
| C．Silent Love, Sound Influence | D．Prepared Mind. Promising Job |
