1 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.
“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.
You can see the irony (讽刺) here.
Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.
The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.
So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.
1. What’s the authors purpose of writing the first paragraph?| A．To express the people’s love for all festivals. |
| B．To talk about the meaning of the festivals. |
| C．To appreciate the value of the festivals. |
| D．To bring out the topic of the passage. |
| A．To help people save money. | B．To cut the cost for daily life. |
| C．To prevent over-consumption. | D．To set up a new sales record. |
| A．Opposed (反对的). | B．Supportive. |
| C．Unknown. | D．Neutral (中立的). |
| A．Creating a New Lifestyle | B．Buy Nothing Day |
| C．Festivals Around the World | D．A Change in People’s Life |
According to
During the May Day holiday, numerous messages of people
What’s more, having a dazi may bring some expected results. Although they made mistakes when playing games, they worked together to turn the tide (局势). By
内容包括：1.写这封倡议信的目的；2.目前存在的问题；3.表达你的倡议和期待。
注意：1.词数80左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇：
安顺市教育局the Educational Bureau of Anshun 先锋pioneer
文明城市 a civilized city
Dear Editor,
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Yours,
Li Hua
4 . Since 2016, China has decided to offer training programs to develop traditional handicrafts (手艺). For Liu Menglan and some other women from North China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (内蒙古自治区) , the traditional handicrafts have changed their lives in a good way.
Back in 2015, Liu’s family lived on an income of 5,000 yuan. “We couldn’t ever afford the food for our sheep and didn’t have anything left at the end of the year,” Lju Menglan recalled. In 2017, she began to learn embroidery (刺绣)skills in a training program supported by the local government. Liu Menglan’s family earned almost 40,000yuan last year. Her family has moved into a new home.
According to the local government, 140 such training programs were carried out in 173 villages. “The skills helped 2, 895 women increase more than 6, 000 yuan every year,” said Bai Jingying, a local official.
For some women, traditional handicrafts, such as paper-cutting, sugar-painting and carving, have enriched their daily lives. Feng Suyan is another example. She is a local woman from Tuquan, and attended paper-cutting classes taught by Zhao Rixia, her teacher. “I started learning paper-cutting six years ago with Zhao. And now, when I see a new pattern, I would take a picture of it and cut it out,” said Feng. She is now good at paper-cutting and becomes an artist in this field. Whenever she is free, she will make a piece and share it on social media platforms.
1. What does the underlined word “he” in Para.2 refer to?| A．Bai Jingying | B．Liu Menglan. |
| C．Feng Suyan | D．Zhao Rixia. |
| A．5,000 yuan | B．30,000 yuan |
| C．40,000 yuan | D．6,000 yuan |
| A．Embroidery | B．Paper-cutting |
| C．Carving | D．Sugar-painting |
5 . One recent report found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day—once every four minutes—and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total. The problem for many of us is that one quick phone-related task leads to a quick check of our email or social media feeds, and suddenly we’ve been trapped into endless scrolling (刷屏).
What we do know is that the simple distraction of checking a phone or seeing a notification (提示) can have negative consequences. This isn’t very surprising; we know that, in general multitasking harms memory and performance. One of the most dangerous examples is phone use while driving. One study found that merely speaking on the phone, not texting, was enough to make drivers slower to react on the road. It’s true for everyday tasks, too. Simply hearing a notification “ding” made participants of another study perform far worse on a task-almost as badly as participants who were speaking or texting on the phone during the task.
In one recent study, for example, researchers asked participants to either put their phones next to them so they were visible (like on a desk), nearby and out of sight (like in a bag or pocket), or in another room. Participants then completed a series of tasks to test their abilities to process and remember information, their problem-solving, and their focus.
They were found to perform far better when their phones were in another room instead of nearby—whether visible, powered on or not. That held true even though most of the participants claimed not to be consciously thinking about their devices.
Our brains may be subconsciously hard at work in preventing the desire from checking our phones, or constantly monitoring the environment to see if we should check our phone (eg. waiting for a notification). Either way, this distracted attention can make doing anything else more difficult. The only “fix”, the researchers found, was putting the device in a different room entirely.
1. What did the recent report in Paragraph I find?| A．Multitasking is very dangerous. |
| B．Notification is always heard. |
| C．People are addicted to mobile phones. |
| D．People like doing phone-related tasks. |
| A．By making comparisons. |
| B．By examining differences. |
| C．By following the order of importance. |
| D．By analyzing causes and giving examples. |
| A．Do anything more difficult. |
| B．Use phones to do right things. |
| C．Monitor the environment around. |
| D．Stay away from phones entirely. |
| A．How do We Avoid the Distraction of Phones? |
| B．Why Are People Fond of Using Mobile Phones? |
| C．What Should We Do When Buying Mobile Phones? |
| D．How Do We Do Research by Using Mobile Phones? |
1. 表示支持；
2. 介绍利弊。
注意:1. 词数80 左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
3. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Jack,
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Li Hua
7 . A child sits beside a bookshelf at Beijing Book Building in the downtown, listening as his mother reads a picture book to him, one word at a time. “We go to bookstores every week or two,” says Wang Bin, the mother. “Kids love reading.”
Wang and her child are among the growing number of people in China who are attracted to physical bookstores, the appeal of which has lasted despite the growth of digital reading. For many, bookstores are a place to hang out, a venue for relaxation, entertainment and cultural enrichment.
Zhao Xianghan, a 20-year-old college student, looks through the books on display at a PageOne bookstore. He didn’t come to buy anything in particular, but to see what is on offer and seek inner peace in preparation for a new term. “Bookstores used to simply sell books, but now they have more functions,” says Zhao. “For example, when selling books, they may sell some cultural and creative products and stationery. They also increasingly have coffee shops connected to them.”
During the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, more than 160 bookstores remained open in Beijing, attracting plenty of visitors, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Press and Publication. They presented themed reading events, held lectures and exhibitions, and organized traditional cultural activities. At a bookstore in Shunyi district, children gave a concert in celebration of Spring Festival. Bookstores also ran programs featuring intangible cultural heritage (非物质文化遗产). At Zhongguancun Book Building, masters of folk art showed young readers how to make small rabbit statues with dough (面团), to mark the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit.
1. Why did Zhao Xianghan go to the PageOne bookstore?| A．To sell some cultural products. | B．To read picture books to children. |
| C．To purchase books and stationery. | D．To find some quietness in heart. |
| A．They have gradually changed into coffee shops. |
| B．They are a combination of reading and relaxation. |
| C．They are aimed to promote intangible cultural heritage. |
| D．They attract more readers compared with digital reading. |
| A．The best-sellers in physical bookstores. | B．The development of physical bookstores. |
| C．The activities held in physical bookstores. | D．The physical bookstores remaining in Beijing. |
| A．To present various functions of physical bookstores. |
| B．To require more people to visit physical bookstores. |
| C．To spread traditional culture via physical bookstores. |
| D．To show the increasing number of readers in bookstores. |
Life is wholly unpredictable. No one can be entirely sure what will happen from one moment to the next. Sandy, a US policewoman, was on the high way in Hanover County, Virginia, traveling to the airport. She was going to take on a fight to Ohio, where she was looking to carry out a special duty.
While Sandy drove her car smoothly, something unexpected happened. The vehicle in front of Sandy, for some unexplained reason, ran out of the roadway at full speed. With the brakes never hit, the car hit a tree badly. Sandy, who witnessed the crash, stopped and approached the vehicle. She wondered whether the driver was OK in such an accident. From the broken window, Sandy saw there were three persons in the vehicle: a mother and her two young children.
“As I approached the car, I could hear a lady screaming, ‘Help! Help! My children are there!’” Sandy recalled. The car was damaged seriously and Sandy found it really hard to open the door of the vehicle. Some smoke began to appear. It seemed that the vehicle might get on fire or, even worse, explode at any moment. After she was finally able to open one of the vehicle’s doors in the back, Sandy noticed the two children totally panicked, shaking all over. And the mother who was stuck in the seat was still screaming, “Help please! Get my babies out of the car.”
Sandy sprang into action. She freed the two children from the vehicle and got them to a safe area, away from the crash scene at once. When she was sure that the two children were not injured so seriously, she let out a deep breath.
Paragraph 1
One of the children asked Sandy, “Are you going to save my mommy?”
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Paragraph 2
“Don’t panic! Calm down!” Sandy shouted.
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9 . Environmental groups have long criticized the private jets(喷气式飞机) for being a large contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, and last week, environmentalists made headlines by interrupting a private jet trade show in Switzerland.
Private jets often cover shorter distances than commercial ones. They are generally less efficient(高效的) and their emissions per passenger are much higher. According to data from European non-profit Transport and Environment, private jets can be 5 to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes, and 50 times more polluting than trains. Research made by Greenpeace showed that private jets in Europe alone emitted 3.39 million metric tons of CO2 in 2022, nearly equal to the emissions from 753,000 gas-powered cars in the US driven for a year.
But experts say the private aviation(航空) industry can still play a role in the global fight against climate change, and some in the industry are looking at creative ways to diminish its environmental impact.
As a member of the International Air Transport Association(IATA), along with other major commercial airlines, Dubai-based private aviation company Jetex launched the 2050 Project: the zero carbon emissions.
“Jetex is always thinking about how to cooperate with everyone to deal with climate change,” said Dr. Suzanne, a professor of aviation at the University of Waterloo. “And now it is working on changing all of its locations into fully green ones in the future. Once it succeeds, it will offer a new approach to the environmental protection.”
Through a partnership with oil company Neste, in 2021 Jetex started offering sustainable aviation fuels(SAF), made from renewable waste, to passengers at its Helsinki Airport. That same year at its Paris Le-Bourget Airport, it began offering SAF produced by French company TotalEnergies, made from used cooking oil. A limited supply of SAF means it isn’t available at every airport, but the company says it wants to make SAF a fuel option to its travelers across all its locations worldwide.
1. What do we know about private jets according to the first two paragraphs?| A．They enjoy great popularity. |
| B．They charge passengers more. |
| C．They give off more carbon dioxide. |
| D．They travel farther than commercial planes. |
| A．Expand. | B．Present. | C．Overlook. | D．Reduce. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Carefree. | C．Tolerant. | D．Supportive. |
| A．Private Jets’ Green Path. | B．The Birth of SAF. |
| C．The Future of Commercial Planes. | D．Jetex’s Cooperation with Others. |
10 . A short while ago, I lost access to my We Chat account.I am not sure why it wouldn’t let me log in; perhaps it was my ancient, out-of-date phone. But I wasn’t upset because it offered me an opportunity to take a break from social media-something more and more people are doing.
In the United States, Twitter and Facebook has seen a 44 percent decline among its younger users. Stars such as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeren have taken a break from social media because they were tired of so many Internet trolls leaving negative comments. Ordinary people (like me) are turning away from it because of the feeling that they were spending more time online and enjoying less.
It is not unusual for people to spend two or three hours a day posting or reading posts, to the point where it becomes an addiction.And it is an addiction. There is a chemical in your brain known as dopamine (多巴胺) which is sometimes called the “reward molecule”and its release gives you a feeling of pleasure. For instance, when you post a photo on We Chat and get a hundred likes, you feel happy. That’s dopamine at work.
In my case, being off We Chat is actually an added bonus. No doubt I missed my dopamine. And I got e-mails from friends wondering if I was fine or if I was just being anti-social. But I soon began to feel quite peaceful and started to worry less about what other people were doing and concentrate more on my personal life. And I’m getting better sleep at night.
I’m not advocating that all of you quit social media, but spending less time on these platforms does bring you advantages.
1. How did the author feel after he lost access to We Chat account?| A．Calm. | B．Worried. |
| C．Disappointed. | D．Surprised. |
| A．To illustrate the importance of social media. |
| B．To compare them with ordinary people. |
| C．To give examples of quitting online platforms. |
| D．To show the popularity of social media. |
| A．Desire. | B．Benefit. |
| C．Mission. | D．Joy. |
| A．How to form good online habits. |
| B．How to use social media properly. |
| C．How to be smart online learners. |
| D．How to cut down the time spent online. |
