1 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Globalisation has profoundly transformed the world. Changes in the sphere of economics, politics, and society have a great impact on our daily lives. Besides the numerous opportunities that globalisation     1     (bring) us, such as increased interconnectedness resulting from advanced communication technology and the expansion of the world market, it     2     (create) a number of significant challenges. Many jobs have become insecure, people work on the basis of short-term contracts, or they     3     (require) to work long hours for low wages. However, the transformations brought on by globalisation is alive with other facets of our lives     4    . There is a growing uncertainty that is significantly reshaping family and community life,     5     (include) the way it influences young people’s decisions on partnership and family formation.

This round table will feature experts from different regions of the world,     6     will offer their insights into this complex phenomenon, and propose policy-oriented solutions for challenges     7     families and communities increasingly deal with in a globalised world.

In particular, the round table will analyse the changes in the structure and functions of the family     8     (result) from globalisation. The question of how families and communities can benefit best from modernity and globalisation,     9     at the same time build resilience against the negative aspects, will receive special attention. The exchange of best practices and lessons     10     (learn) from different countries and regions will serve as the basis for future-oriented solutions.

2 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．To encourage its people to retire later.	B．To import more goods from abroad.
C．To give its people additional social welfare.	D．To change the long-held Western prejudice.

2.

A．Small companies.

B．Industrialists.

C．Trade unions.

D．Young people.

3.

A．They know how to spend money.	B．They are forced out of their class.
C．The hold the same belief as the retired.	D．They support their hardworking parents.

3 . Like expensive watches that never break, the world’s best airports can be boring. You land, move through passport control and check into a hotel within minutes. The experience is pleasant, but not memorable. The worst airports have more characters. To adapt Tolstoy, lovely airports are all alike, but every wretched airport is wretched in its own way.

To work out which is the world’s worst airport, we conducted a survey of our correspondents who travelled a lot. It attracted more, and more passionate, responses than nearly any other internal survey we have done.

Although each awful airport is unique, four themes occur again and again: danger, bullying by officials, theft and delay. Sometimes, all these enhance each other. For example, it takes ages to get through Lubumbashi airport (in the Democratic Republic of Congo) because security officials slow things down in the hope that passengers will give them “un Cadeau” to hurry up. If you hand over $1, they let you board without your bags getting checked at all. Such deals make air travel in places like Congo slower, riskier, costlier and much more unpleasant.

Air travellers make tempting targets for thieves. They are rich enough to afford an air ticket, which in many places makes them rich indeed. They carry luggage, some of it valuable. They are often far from home and unfamiliar with local rules. And airports are full of choke points through which travellers must pass if they are to board their planes, creating opportunities for dishonest officials to charge them. The ones in Manila are especially creative. Some have been known to plant bullets in luggage so they can “find” them and demand money not to have the owners arrested.

Rules change at borders, and some airport officials enforce them mindlessly. One correspondent recalls that in Santiago, Chile: “I once got detained for two hours for failing to declare an unopened, sealed bag of almonds. I then had to write a declaration expressing my regret for bringing the nuts. When I failed to do so without cracking up I was threatened with arrest. The lady next to me was being interrogated for carrying a lone banana.”

Poor countries have an excuse for poor airports. Rich countries do not, which is perhaps why travellers are particularly annoyed to find grottiness (恶心) in, say, Brussels, the heart of the European Union. Our Charlemagne columnist writes of Charleroi, its second airport: “It is dirty and crowded, and has terrible food. The planes leave and land at unreasonble hours. And the only real way into town is a coach that runs every 30 minutes and is frequently overbooked: more than once I’ve queued in the rain only to see it drive off as I reach the front.”

1. The last sentence of the first paragraph implies that _______.

A．each bad airport is unique

B．good airports are hard to find

C．awful airports have a lot in common

D．the world’s best airports are not that good

2. Lubumbashi airport is mentioned in paragraph 3 in order to _______.

A．explain how delay occurs in African airports

B．illustrate how the four themes are interrelated

C．argue against the necessity of airport security officials

D．give an example of what $1 means to people in Congo

3. The phrase “choke points” (paragraph 4) is closet in meaning to “_______”.

A．agents

B．passengers

C．stores

D．barriers

4. What can be learned about Charleroi?

A．It is located in a rich country.

B．It used to be dirty and crowded.

C．It used to be close to the city center.

D．It is the country’s second largest airport.

4 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. distributed     B. localize       C. broadcast     D. briefing       E. attached       F. existing       G. boost H. emerging       I. involved       J. crack            K. response

Chip flow interrupted

A stable global supply chain of chips had been maintained before disruptive moves by the US.

Two of the US’ top chipmakers—NVIDIA and AMD-were ordered to stop exports of two high-end chips to China on Aug 31. The ban     1     sophisticated (精密的) chips for graphics processing units (GPUs); which have been widely used in applications including AI and creative production.

This came after US President Joe Biden signed an order to pass the $52.7 billion (about 369.5 billion yuan) semiconductor chip manufacturing subsidy (补贴) and research law on Aug 25.

It aims to     2     efforts to “make the United States more competitive with China’s science and technology efforts”, Reuters noted.

Biden also signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 into law on Aug 9. According to the act, chip makers that shift their factories to the US can receive subsidies and tax benefits with     3     conditions that restrict US companies from increasing investments in China for 10 years.

“The US and its allies,” Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and a financier for the Bill Clinton, Obama and Biden presidential campaigns, said in March, “should utilize targeted export controls on high-end semiconductor manufacturing equipment... to protect     4     technical advantages and slow the advancement of China’s semiconductor industry”.

In     5     to the US latest act, Woo Jin-hoon, a guest professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, wrote for China Daily, this is “a move that can be profitable for the US in the short term, but harmful in the long run”.

The design, manufacturing and even raw materials of a complete and complex product like semiconductors (especially chips) are usually     6     across many different countries and regions, forming a huge trade network.

No matter how hard countries or regions try to support their own manufacturing bases and     7     their production, a certain degree of interdependence among countries and regions is unavoidable, China Daily commented.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Sept 1 at a press     8     that the US move is typical “sci-tech hegemony (霸权)”.

“With its technological advantages, the US has abused the concept of national security and its state power to     9     down on the development of     10     economies and developing countries,” said Wang. “The move violates market economy principles, harms international economic and trade orders and disrupts the stability of global industrial and supply chains.”

5 . Directions: Fill in the blanks with proper words. The first letter has already been given.

Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s biggest airline, has fired three cabin crew members after a passenger aboard a flight from Chengdu to Hong Kong complained of d    1    .

In a viral post on the lifestyle app Xiaohongshu on Monday, the passenger said flight a    2     had made fun of non-English-speaking passengers aboard the plane. The author of the post said she was aboard flight CX987 and overheard cabin crew chatting with each other in Cantonese and English.

“If you cannot say blanket, you cannot have it…the carpet is on the floor, feel free if you want to lie on it,” people are heard saying in a recording. The author also alleged that a woman sitting next to her was also r    3     dismissed when seeking help in English to fill out the customs declaration card.

“I can’t understand why they have such great hostility toward passengers who don’t speak English or Cantonese,” the post said. “Why can’t they give even basic r    4     to passengers?”

Amid the social media storm that ensued, Cathay Pacific said in a statement on Weibo that the three flight attendants involved in the incident were fired after an investigation. The airline added that a cross-departmental working group led by its CEO Ronald Lam would u    5     a comprehensive review of services, staff training, and other systems to prevent such incidents from occurring again.

“The most important thing is to make sure that all our e    6     must respect passengers from different cultural backgrounds and provide professional and consistent services in all serving areas,” Cathay Pacific stated.

On Wednesday, Lam a    7     and reiterated the company’s statement during an off-line event in Guangzhou.

But the spate of apologies and official statements, which even included one from Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, f    8     to quell public outrage.

“For a company that seems unrepentant, is a mere apology sufficient?” asked China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, claiming that the anger on social media highlighted the company’s “arrogance in its bones and cc for its customers.”

Lee said on Weibo Tuesday that he was “very infuriated and disappointed” by the i    9    .

“These disrespectful words and d    10     have hurt the feelings of compatriots in Hong Kong and the mainland, and also undermined the city’s existing culture and values of respect, courtesy, and inclusiveness,” he said.

6 . A simple piece of rope hangs between some environmentally friendly Americans and their neighbors. On one side stand those who have begun to see clothes dryers as a wasteful consumers of energy (up to 6% of total electricity) and powerful emitters of carbon dioxide (up to a ton of CO2 per household every year). As an alternative, they are turning to clotheslines as part of what Alexander Lee, an environmentalist, calls “what-I-can-do environmentalism.”

But the other side are people who oppose air-drying laundry outside on visual grounds. Increasingly, they have persuaded community and homeowners associations (HOAs) access the U.S. to ban outdoor clotheslines, which they say not only look unattractive but also lower surrounding property values. Those actions, in turn, have led to a right-to-dry movement that is pressing for making laws to protect the choice to use clotheslines. Only three states — Florida, Hawaii and Utah — have laws written broadly enough to protect clotheslines. Right-to-dry advocates argue that there should be more.

Matt Reck is the kind of eco-conscious guy who feeds his trees with bathwater and recycles condensation drops (冷凝水) from his air conditioners to water plants. His family also uses a clothesline. But Otto Hagen, president of Reck’s HOA in Wake Forest, N.C., notified him that a neighbor had complained about his line. The Recks ignored the warning and still dry their clothes on a rope in the yard. “Many people claim to be environmentally friendly but don’t take matters into their own hands,” says Reck. HOAs Hagen has decided to hold off taking action. “I’m not going to go crazy,” he says. “But if Matt keeps his line and more neighbors complains, I’ll have to address it again.”

North Carolina lawmakers tried and failed earlier this year to insert language into an energy bill that would expressly prevent HOAs from regulating clotheslines. But the issue remains a touchy one with HOAs and real estate agents. “Most visual restrictions are rooted. to a degree, in the belief that homogenous (统一协调的) external appearance are supportive of property value,” says Sara Stubbins, executive director of the Community Association Institute’s North Carolina chapter. In other words, associations worry that housing prices will fall if prospective buyers think their would-be neighbors are too poor to afford dryers.

Alexander Lee dismisses the notion that clotheslines devalue property advocating that the idea “needs to change in light of global warming.” “We all have to do at least something to decrease our carbon footprint,” Alexander Lee says.

1. What is NOT mentioned as a disadvantage of using clothes dryers?

A．Electricity consumption.	B．Air pollution.
C．Waste of energy.	D．Ugly looking.

2. Which of the following is INCORRECT?

A．Opposers think air-drying laundry would devalue surrounding property.

B．Opposers consider the outdoor clothesline as an eyesore to the scenery.

C．Right-to-dry movements led to the pass of written laws to protect clotheslines.

D．Most of states in the US have no written laws to protect clotheslines.

3. In the last paragraph Alexander Lee recommends that ______.

A．clotheslines should be banned in the community

B．clotheslines wouldn’t lessen the property values

C．the globe would become warmer and warmer

D．we should protect the environment in the community

4. An appropriate title for the passage might be ______.

A．Opinions on Environmental Protection	B．Opinions on Air-drying Laundry
C．What-I-Can-Do Environmentalism	D．Restrictions on Clotheslines

7 . So few adults can remember the details of their own preschool or kindergarten years, it can be hard to appreciate just how much the early-education landscape has been transformed over the past two decades. The changes are not restricted to the physical environment of classrooms. Teaching methods and curricula have changed too. Much greater parts of the day are now spent on what’s called “seatwork”(a term that probably doesn’t need any explanation) and direct instruction, formerly used mainly in the older grades, in which a teacher carefully controls the content and pacing of what a child is supposed to learn.

One study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?” compared kindergarten teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent. The researchers also reported more time spent with workbooks and worksheets, and less time devoted to music and art. Kindergarten is indeed the new first grade, the authors concluded. In turn, children who would once have used the kindergarten year as a gentle transition into school are in some cases being held back before they’ve had a chance to start.

Until recently, school-readiness skills weren’t high on anyone’s agenda, nor was the idea that the youngest learners might be disqualified from moving on to the next stage. But now that kindergarten serves as a gatekeeper, not a welcome mat, to elementary school, concerns about school preparedness kick in earlier and earlier. A child who’s supposed to read by the end of kindergarten had better be getting ready in preschool. As a result, expectations that may arguably have been reasonable for 5- and 6-year-olds, such as being able to sit at a desk and complete a task using pencil and paper, are now directed at even younger children, who Jack the motor skills and attention span to be successful.

Preschool classrooms have become increasingly difficult spaces, with teachers asking pre-schoolers to finish their “work” before they can go play. And yet, even as pre-schoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say that they seem somehow less curious and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations. More children today seem to lack the language skills needed to retell a simple story or to use basic connecting words and prepositions. They can’t make a conceptual analogy between, say, the veins(纹理) on a leaf and the veins in their own hands.

That’s right. The same educational policies that are publishing academic goals down to ever earlier levels seem to be contributing to the fact that young children are gaining fewer skills, not more.

1. What can be inferred from the sentence “Kindergarten is indeed the new first grade”?

A．Kindergarten is going to replace the first grade in the future.

B．Kindergarten kids are asked to learn what first-graders learn.

C．Today’s kindergarten kids are smarter than first graders in the past.

D．Some kids choose to skip kindergarten to go to the first grade directly.

2. By “kindergarten serves as a gatekeeper”, the writer implies that some kindergarten kids________.

A．might not be able to go to the kindergarten

B．are worried about their school-readiness skills

C．are not allowed to move on to elementary school

D．think of the kindergarten year as a gentle transition

3. What idea does the writer intend to convey in Paragraph 4?

A．Pre-schoolers need to be academically prepared.

B．Preschool teachers are not as kind as they used to be.

C．Today’s preschool education doesn’t prove successful.

D．Children pick up their first language later than before.

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．What Preschool Kids Should Be Taught

B．How the New Preschool Is Damaging Kids

C．Why We Should Take Preschoolers Seriously

D．Who Is to Blame for Preschoolers’ Lack of Skills

8 . If you survey American parents about what they want for their kids, more than 90 percent say one of their top priorities is that their children be caring. This makes sense: Kindness and concern for others are held as _________ in nearly every society. But when you ask children what their parents _________ for them, 81 percent say their parents value achievement and happiness over caring.

Kids learn what’s important to adults not by listening to what we say, but by _________ what gets our attention. And in many developed societies, parents now pay more attention to individual achievement and happiness than anything else. However much we _________ kindness and caring, we’re not actually showing our kids that we value these traits (特点).

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that kindness appears to be _________. An analysis of annual surveys of American college students showed a substantial drop from 1979 to 2009 in imagining the _________ of others.

It’s not just that people care less; they seem to be _________ less, too. In one experiment, a sociologist left behind thousands of what appeared to be lost letters in dozens of American cities in 2001, and again in 2011. From the first round to the second one, the proportion of letters that was _________ by helpful passersby and put in a mailbox declined by 10 percent. Psychologists find that kids born after 1995 are just as likely as their parents to _________ that other people experiencing difficulty should be helped — but they feel less personal responsibility to take action themselves. __________, they are less likely to donate to charity, or even to express an interest in doing so.

If we truly care less about one another, some of the blame lies with the values parents have __________. In our own lives, we’ve observed many fellow parents becoming so focused on achievement that they fail to cultivate kindness. They seem to regard their children’s successes as a personal badge (徽章) of honor and their children’s failures as a(n) __________ reflection on their own parenting.

Other parents unconsciously __________ kindness, seeing it as a source of weakness in a fiercely competitive world. But there’s no reason parents can’t teach their kids to care about others and themselves — to be both __________ and self-respecting. If you encourage children to consider the needs and feelings of others, sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t. But they’ll soon learn that if you don’t __________ others considerately, they may not be considerate toward you. And those around you will be less likely to be considerate of one another, too.

1.

A．miracles

B．aspects

C．virtues

D．schedules

2.

A．want

B．make

C．change

D．buy

3.

A．answering

B．wondering

C．challenging

D．noticing

4.

A．praise

B．research

C．forget

D．link

5.

A．of significance

B．out of order

C．on exhibit

D．in decline

6.

A．studies

B．perspectives

C．careers

D．backgrounds

7.

A．thinking

B．doing

C．helping

D．learning

8.

A．left off

B．taken over

C．set aside

D．picked up

9.

A．doubt

B．recall

C．object

D．believe

10.

A．In addition

B．By contrast

C．For example

D．To date

11.

A．criticized

B．elevated

C．assessed

D．impacted

12.

A．accurate

B．admiring

C．mental

D．negative

13.

A．promote

B．understand

C．distinguish

D．discourage

14.

A．creative

B．initiative

C．generous

D．idealistic

15.

A．consider

B．treat

C．hear

D．observe

10 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. access       B. balance       C. device       D. issues       E. pursuits       F. review       G. separate       H. signs I. social          J. staying        K. waking

Why taking a phone break is so good for you

You are probably too attached to that needy black rectangle you carry around everywhere you go. Although it’s not formally recognized as an addiction—yet— “problematic smartphone use” interferes with many aspects in life, say Jay Olsen, a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at McGill University who has researched the topic. “It could be interfering with your concentration. It could be that you feel less     1     when using your phone. It could be that you’re sleeping less well, because you’re     2     up late scrolling.”

Those     3     likely sound familiar, because smartphone overuse “affects almost anybody who has a     4     at this point,” says Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. “The digital content is just so appealing, and we have such easy     5    .” Smartphone use also intensified during the pandemic’s first lonely years.

But failing to     6     from your screen could have harmful implications. Research links smartphone overuse to a wide variety of physical and mental-health     7    . People who are glued to their phones tend to get worse sleep and less of it. And according to a     8     published in Frontiers in Psychology in August, smartphone overuse can lead to anxiety, stress, and depression. All that scrolling also consumes your time and attention, leaving less to spend on healthy     9     like exercise and spending time with loved ones.

Take some space from your phone—even for short amounts of time—can help restore your     10    , attention, and even faith in humanity. “I think disconnecting matters to everyone,” says Adam Alter, a professor of marketing at NYU.