1 . I woke to the sound of birds outside my window and lay in bed, going over the busy day ahead of me. Finally, I got up and attempted to switch on the light — nothing happened. I checked my phone. No Wi-Fi, no data. With our unstable cell service, there was no way of knowing if we had received alerts fbr a power failure. I grabbed a sweater, went downstairs, found a flashlight and a match to light the gas stove, and then boiled water to brew coffee. Outside the window, the falling snow obscured (遮蔽) the sunrise. Deep piles of snow covered the road.
My work meetings and deadlines, my sons’ classes and tests, my husband’s plans — everything would have to wait. Why does this happen today of all days?“ I asked. Thankfully, the wood stove was still going strong. I took a deep breath. I supposed we had everything we needed.
The house was quiet as I sipped my coffee and cuddled (搂抱) our dog. One by one, my husband and sons came downstairs and complained about the turn the day had taken.
I opened the curtains to let light in. We gathered around the table and had cereal. After breakfast, my husband played a game of solitaire. Then my sons joined him in building a house of cards that reached three levels until our cat jumped up to investigate and knocked it down. We played a round of Scrabble and had my favorite snow day lunch: grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Then we took a long walk in the woods behind our house, walking along the stream. We spotted deer tracks and played in the snow that was coming down in big fluffy flakes. When we returned, all the clocks in the house were blinking. I started to make dinner, happy to have things back to normal — even better than normal.
It was a day that began without electricity, cut off from the rest of the world, and ended with hot chocolate and power restored. We were recharged by the unexpected gift of a day together.
1. What did the author find when she woke up?| A．Heavy snow trapped the family in the house. |
| B．The electricity supply had been cut off. |
| C．It was still early for breakfast. |
| D．Her phone wouldn’t be turned on. |
| A．Their arrangements were upset. |
| B．They had to serve themselves with simple meals. |
| C．The family encountered a shortage of supplies. |
| D．Everyone was angry about this unexpected event. |
| A．To pave the way for her insight. |
| B．To present the daily life of the family. |
| C．To show the close family relationship. |
| D．To create a lighthearted atmosphere. |
| A．It was a temporary disaster. |
| B．It was a day full of exciting adventures. |
| C．It was a lovely day of family togetherness. |
| D．It was a rare moment of leisure and freedom. |
2 . My mother is a diligent and kind woman. She is very busy from morning till night. As a teacher, she works hard.
My mother has been teaching math at a middle school in my hometown. She goes to work early in the morning and does not return home until late in the afternoon.
Often she says to us, “work while you work, and play while you play. That is the way to be happy and gay. If you do not work, you will become lazy and be of no use to society”. What a piece of good advice this is!
| A．She enjoys listening to classic music. |
| B．As a mother, she takes good care of us and gives us every comfort. |
| C．She loves her students and cares for them. |
| D．She never goes to expensive restaurants to enjoy meals. |
| E．My mother is hard-working and never wastes money. |
| F．I never forget it and always bear it in my mind. |
| G．Can you tell us something about your mother? |
3 . When it comes to making lunch for their kids, moms and dads have usual favorites. For some parents in the US, those favorites are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches-also known as PB&.Js. Fruit like apples and bananas are also popular.
But one mother has an unusual go-to ingredient for her children’s lunches. Jenny Mollen uses funny-looking candy eyes. She has learned that her children will eat any healthy food if it has edible eyeballs attached. The “eyeballs” are really pieces of candy.
Her children laugh while they eat healthy foods like bell peppers, kiwis, or dates. Mollen says candy “eyes” make lunch more fun.
“Honestly, first of all, just buy yourself some candy googly eyes. They are tried-and-true,” she said. She admits that “you lose something nutritionally” by giving children candy. But she thinks that getting children to eat healthy food by putting candy on it is worth it.
Mollen’s lunch tricks bring together food and craft. She uses tricks because her two sons hate to eat different kinds of foods. So, she decorates their food to resemble animals or even their favorite Pokémon characters. She makes edible “bugs” made from dates, pretzel sticks for the legs, and, of course, candy “eyes”. She also uses leftover Chinese food to make panda bears from rice and seaweed.
Mollen says her lunch projects are easy to do. And her sons think they have won a big prize at their midday meal. Mollen says making fun-looking, artful lunches for her children helps ease her guilt as she is a working mom. Her artful lunches are her way of reminding her children that she is thinking of them.
Mollen says she also wants to teach them healthy eating habits. She says that by getting kids to eat vegetables at a young age, they will grow up to eat healthy foods later in life. She also says it is a good way to get children to try foods from other cultures. If they need to be “tricked” sometimes, that is okay.
1. What’s the purpose of Mollen’s lunch projects?| A．To make her children’s day. |
| B．To remind people to save food. |
| C．To persuade other parents to follow suit. |
| D．To ensure her children’s healthy diet. |
| A．It contains all kinds of food. |
| B．It is made up of candy. |
| C．It combines art and nutrition. |
| D．It is full of Chinese styles. |
| A．They have taken to their fun-looking lunches. |
| B．They have broaden their knowledge of food. |
| C．They have bonded with their favorite animals. |
| D．They have swept to victory in the meal competitions. |
| A．Mollen’s plans for cooking lunches. |
| B．The benefits of Mollen’s lunch tricks. |
| C．Mollen’s expectations of her children. |
| D．The culture elements in Mollen’s lunch. |
A few years ago, my wife Sue had some fairly serious health problems. She had suffered surgery after surgery and had also put on weight for several years. Diets had not helped her.
One day we sat down and drew up a “wish list” of the things we wanted most out of life. One of Sue’s items was to run in a marathon. Given her history and physical limitations, I thought her goal was completely unrealistic, but Sue became committed to it.
She began by running very slowly around. Every day she ran just a little farther than she had the day before just one driveway more. “When will I ever be able to run a mile?” Sue asked one day. Soon she was running three. Then five. “We can change ourselves for the better and cause ourselves to pursue our most precious desires with almost total success,” Sue said and registered to run in the St. George Marathon in southern Utah.
I drove the mountainous road from Cedar City to St. George. When the marathon began, I parked the car near the finish line and waited for Sue to come in. Five hours later, it was raining steadily and the wind was cold. Several cold and injured runners had been transported past me, and I began to panic. The image of Sue, alone and cold, off the road somewhere, made me sick with worry. The fast and strong competitors had finished long ago, and runners were becoming fewer and fewer. Now I could not see anyone in either direction.
Almost all of the cars along the marathon route had left, and some normal traffic was beginning. I was able to drive directly up the race route. There were still no runners in view after driving almost two miles. Then I went around a bend in the road and spotted two runners running up ahead.
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。
It was Sue in the company of a girl runner, struggling.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________At the finish line, the girl hugged Sue, “You made me believe we could do it.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________| settle for, be proud of, turn to, thanks to, in the lead, lose track of, after all |
It was the final part of the 2016 World Triathlon series in Mexico. Jonny was
6 . One day, Hilary Krieger was sitting in her parents’ home when her friend accidentally squirted (喷射) himself with an orange slice. “Oh, the orange just orbisculated,” she said. “It did what?” asked her friend, “I’ve never heard such a word.” The two made a five-dollar bet, and Hilary gleefully grabbed the family dictionary. She quickly turned to the “O” section and didn’t find it. Then she burst into her dad’s study and told him the shocking news: “Orbisculate” was not in the dictionary!
Looking embarrassed, her father confessed that he had made up the word when in college. He defined “orbisculate” as the action that happens “when you dig your spoon into a grapefruit and it squirts juice directly into your eye,” though the family also applied it to other fruits and vegetables that unexpectedly sprayed. “We had been using it our whole lives, as if it were a real word,” Hilary says.
Out five dollars and wondering what other fake words might exist in her vocabulary. Hilary was mad. But she quickly came to see her dad’s made-up word as a gift, one that, revealed his naughty and inventive spirit. “It speaks to his creativity and the idea that, even when something’s painful and annoying, like getting grape fruit juice in your eye, you can laugh and have fun with it, ” she says.
Two decades later, Hilary told that funny story again and again, in sad circumstances. Her father, Neil Krieger, died at age 78. “‘Orbisculate’ is such a great word that I dream it should be in the dictionary!” says Hilary. To get the word officially recognized, Hilary set up a website, orbisculate.com, encouraging people to use “orbisculate” in a wide variety of contexts.
Getting a word into the dictionary isn’t easy, but words describing concrete phenomena that affect many people tend to get picked up. “That’s one of the things ‘orbisculate’ has going for it — there is no single word that captures’ the squirting in the eye that certain fruits do,” senior editor of the Merriam-Webster dictionary Emily Brewster says. “The word’s status as an established member of the English language would be pretty undeniable.”
1. What shocked Hilary Krieger one day?| A．Her friend’s squirting juice into his eyes. |
| B．Losing five dollars in the bet. |
| C．Failing to find “orbisculate” in the dictionary. |
| D．Her father’s making up the word. |
| A．The application of the word to other fruits. |
| B．Her father’s naughty and inventive spirit. |
| C．The fun she got from the word “orbisculate”. |
| D．Her dream about the word again and again. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Unclear. |
| A．To recall her childhood life. | B．To memorialize her father. |
| C．To get herself officially recognized. | D．To encourage people to make up new words. |
7 . Using money earned (挣得) from her first part-time job, Sofi Cruz from Conway, South Carolina, brought one of her classmates to tears (眼泪) with a wonderful gift in the new school year. Sofi says her friend Jahiem has always been that one student who does all of his work perfectly and never misses school, always helping teachers in class, and always being a happy human being.
Jahiem had said that he needed new shoes and Sofi said she had been wanting to get him something special for a while. So one day, Sofi pulled her newly earned money together and bought a pair of shoes for her best classmate.
She surprised Jahiem in class one day ,approaching(走近) his desk slowly with a bag.“I’ve known you for a very long time -since third grade. And you are very special to me, Sofi told Jahiem.
“You are a very good friend to me. And, since I got a job, I’ve been thinking about getting something special for somebody, and this is for you,”she said, handing him the bag. Jahiem opened the bag and found a shoebox with new shoes inside. She also gave him a pair of socks to go with his new shoes.
The unexpected act of kindness completely moved Jahiem. He began crying, resting his head on the shoebox in disbelief. Sofi walked around his desk and gave him a hug(拥抱). Another classmate helped record the moment.
“Seeing him crying was very emotional( 激动的), ”Sofi wrote in a Facebook post that has since been shared 1,800 times.“I am so thankful to know that giving Jahiem those shoes made him so happy and allowed me to realize that giving someone something so special can be life-changing.
After drying his tears of happiness,Jahiem proudly sported his brand-new shoes, gifted to him with love.
1. What can we learn about Jahiem from Sofi’ s words in the first paragraph?| A．He is a good student with great personalities. |
| B．He cares little about personal happiness. |
| C．He wants to be a teacher in the future. |
| D．He is into shoe collecting. |
| A．She helped him to clean his desk. | B．She gave him a pair of new shoes. |
| C．She offered him a new part- time job. | D．She introduced her best friend to him. |
| A．Worried. | B．Annoyed. | C．Touched. | D．Proud. |
| A．Shy but helpful. | B．Strict but caring. |
| C．Friendly and brave. | D．Kind and thoughtful. |
8 . Whenever my nine-year-old daughter approached me, eyes wide, with a notebook and a pen, telling me she wanted to engage in a game of school, something inside me froze. There was a mental block so huge that it felt like I was being asked by Elon Musk to make a presentation about artificial intelligence. So, nine times out of ten, I made an excuse.
Why is it so hard to play with my child? I realize this is because I have no idea how to play. I have many happy memories of my youth, but absolutely none involves playing dolls or building blocks with my parents. I don’t blame them because they were never played with as children either. When I ask them what their own childhoods were like, my dad tells me a story about being locked in a cupboard, while my mum recalls the box of buttons she was told to amuse herself with.
There are studies showing how important play is for a child’s growth, and no end of people campaigning for our young to get more of it at school. The poet Michael Rosen, in his Book of Play, argues play is not an extra and all of us, whatever age, could do with more silliness in our lives.
As Rosen explains, “The need for adults to be productive member’s of society means we end up thinking of things that make us laugh, or which are fun to do, as not being very significant or having very little value.” This is exactly why we need to play more. It lightens the load of life and allows us to get back to a childlike state of wonder.
Play is vital to health. And it is why I’ve started playing school games with my daughter. I managed an entire hour and a half the other day—and afterwards, I felt happy. A good 20 years younger.
1. How did the author use to respond to her daughter’s request for a game?| A．She pretended to be surprised. | B．She apologized for being busy. |
| C．She chose to avoid involvement. | D．She turned to artificial intelligence. |
| A．The game category. | B．Memory strategies. | C．The generation gap. | D．Childhood experiences. |
| A．Laughter is the best medicine. | B．Play is not only intended for children. |
| C．Thinking like a kid frees people of stress. | D．Staying curious makes a productive worker. |
| A．Children grow up well in a fun environment. |
| B．Family interaction strengthens the parent-child tie. |
| C．Parents owe it to their children to play more with them. |
| D．Games are essential for children both at school and at home. |
9 . When I was 14, I invited some friends for a party at our home out in the country.
I planned it well, but something
When it was time for us to ride the bus, Nora, one of my friends, didn’t
Nora
Years later, I began to reflect on that ugly phone conversation. Now, I
| A．unexpected | B．unproven | C．unfair | D．unsure |
| A．take over | B．show off | C．turn up | D．set out |
| A．guilty | B．mad | C．embarrassed | D．skeptical |
| A．reach out | B．step forward | C．look away | D．back out |
| A．answers | B．comfort | C．expectations | D．company |
| A．explained | B．announced | C．predicted | D．complained |
| A．attempted | B．intended | C．refused | D．pretended |
| A．merely | B．barely | C．regularly | D．frequently |
| A．urgent | B．formal | C．random | D．hurtful |
| A．Quarrel | B．Friendship | C．Tolerance | D．Disagreement |
| A．regretted | B．ignored | C．remembered | D．honored |
| A．self-disciplined | B．self-centered | C．self-respected | D．self-contained |
| A．accessible | B．easy | C．right | D．valuable |
| A．decision | B．sympathy | C．information | D．forgiveness |
| A．serious | B．strange | C．healthy | D．natural |
My teenage son, Jordan, always complained about having to be home earlier than all his friends. He would tell me that he was already seventeen, but still had a curfew (宵禁). He believed he was practically an adult. I pointed out that he was not an adult as he was still in high school.
“You don’t trust me!” he yelled. Before I continued, he rolled his eyes, slammed the door and walked away. I sighed. How could I make Jordan see that I only wanted to keep him safe?
I decided to go for a walk, hoping the December air would clear my head. I opened the front door and nearly stepped on her: a small black cat, just like a meatball. “Hi, Meatball,” I said, bringing her into my arms. I walked back in, touching her neck gently. Meatball seemed happy enough to come in the house, but after an hour or two, she sat by the door, meowing to go back outside.
“Why won’t she just stay in with us all the time?” Nathan, my youngest son asked.
I explained to him that she was happy here but she liked being able to come and go as she pleased.
“That must be nice,” Jordan muttered from the other room, complaining why the cat, not him, could come and go. He even asked me to give Meatball a curfew.
Meatball became a regular.
One night, temperatures were unusually low. Meatball stood at the door, meowing to go outside.
I shook my head at her, afraid that she might freeze to death. She stared at me and meowed again. I patted her head, “I know you’re not happy, but it’s for your own good.”
“Mom’s not being mean to you,” Nathan told the cat. “She’s just trying to keep you from turning into a frozen meatball.” We both laughed at his joke.
The next morning, I couldn’t find Meatball. I asked the kids if anyone had seen her.
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。
Jordan nodded, “I let her out last night.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As I drove to the animal hospital, Jordan sat in the back, holding Meatball inside his coat.
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