1 . As a CEO of a startup, you get used to hearing"no".You also face an endless continuation of what feels like shocking crises, like nearly running out of cash, losing a key customer,discovering a widespread product failure, or having to shut down operations because of a global pandemic. But it turns out that these disasters can actually be good for you. In fact,I'm not sure whether you can innovate without them. Here's what all our crises have taught me.

It's good to be uncomfortable. We once had a key customer request-a battery capability that we'd never developed before. The customer made it clear that if we couldn't develop this capability, they'd be less confident in our product. We wrestled with the risks, not least of which was the potential embarrassment if we couldn't meet the customer's needs. We knew we'd face many technical problems if we tried to go into operation. Yet we decided to try to satisfy the customer, even if it wasn't obvious at first how we could get it done. A few weeks later we delivered something beyond what the customer had asked for, and we've since grown this capability into a powerful sales tool and potential revenue stream-not to mention it strengthened our relationship with the customer.

Short-term failure is good. A few years ago, our company began to expand our manufacturing output in response to a customer's need. In the process we discovered something unusual we hadn't seen during smaller-scale production. Our team dived into failure analysis, and we finally put the problem down to a single material within the battery. We'd used this material for years, but now we needed a replacement. Once we made that change,the battery quality and reliability greatly improved.

It's okay to show weakness. One of my hardest days as CEO was the day when I found out I was pregnant.We were in the middle of raising a funding round, and I had been traveling nonstop for a year. Until that day, I had assumed that my role as CEO was to display strength and confidence. With the mounting pressure I was harder on myself than I needed to be, and now I had the added stress of being pregnant.I decided to acknowledge to my team that I was breaking down. They united together and found ways to operate more smoothly and communicate more effectively, supporting me to focus my time on most pressing goals. This gave me not only the space to plan for the company’s future,but also to prepare for my own new normal: leading while becoming a first-time mother.

1. What does the underlined word "them" in Paragraph 1 refer to?

A．Frequent rejections.

B．Financial crises.

C．Global pandemics.

D．Endless disasters.

2. What does the author want to convey in Paragraph 2？

A．Customers' requests should be carefully evaluated.

B．Meeting challenges can bring about extra benefits.

C．The company should keep launching new products.

D．Innovation is the only way to win fierce competition.

3. How does the author prove short-term failure is beneficial?

A．By drawing a comparison.

B．By giving an example.

C．By challenging assumptions.

D．By doing an experiment.

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

A．Learn to let go

B．Make it as a CEO

C．Think deep sometimes

D．Make friends with crises

2 . 阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。

The term “helicopter（直升机） parents” is a description of parents who are hovering(盘旋) over their children in a state of extreme concern. They always show up to solve their children’s problems, protect them from real or imagined harm, resolve stressful situations, offer advice and get them out of trouble, even if they behave wrongly. Although out of love and concern, it can have harmful effects on their children’s emotional development and future independence.

Children learn through their mistakes. But if you intervene(干涉，介入) at first sign of struggle and finish your child’s homework, he’ll miss out on valuable learning opportunities.

You’re sending him the message that he needs to be perfect and failure is not an option; otherwise you wouldn’t always take over from him.

By constantly rescuing your child from stressful situations, you’re sending him a message that you don’t believe he’s able to take care of himself. Children develop self-esteem(自尊) by learning how to complete challenges on their own. If you are always intervening, he will miss this vital stage in his growth. As a result, your child may lack the confidence necessary to do well in school, pursuing hobbies and interests, and developing friendships.

If you’re always taking care of everything for your child, it’ll be more difficult for him to become independent. As an adult, he might find it hard to take care of himself, because he has never developed coping skills to deal with life’s challenges. He might suffer from irrational(不理智的) fears, anxiety and depression, which could lead him to drop out of college or frequently change jobs, according to Dr Michele Borba. Instead of developing healthy relationships, he might seek a partner who will take care of or control him, as his parents did.

You can help your child become more independent by allowing him to complete tasks and challenges on his own without your intervention. Even if he fails at first, don’t interfere(干涉，干预) — encourage him to start again. Show that you have faith in his abilities to succeed without your help. Allow him to learn natural consequences（后果）. Even small things can help him become more independent— making his own bed, preparing his own lunch, shopping for his own clothes and doing homework without your help.

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3 . We’ve all seen them. They were the unfamiliar and often socially awkward kids. “Who are they?” we all whispered. When we asked our parents about these kids, they replied in that slightly high-nosed tone, “Oh, they’re homeschooled.”

Despite the disgrace which still surrounds homeschooling, parents who choose this form of education are finally getting their benefits. Since 1999, the number of parents who choose to homeschool their children has grown by 75%. And although the number of children in a homeschooling environment still only account for only 4% of the total number of school-going youth, the number of parents choosing to give up “traditional” public education is growing seven times faster than the rate of children being enrolled in public schools each year.

For those who argue that these numbers do not justify the effectiveness of a homeschooled education, we might instead look to the statistics. The typical homeschooled child scores in the 65th to 89th percentile on standardized testing, while the average child in a public school environment scores somewhere around the 50th percentile. Further, homeschooled children have been shown to score consistently higher on the ACT and go on to earn higher GPAs as college students. Homeschooled children have even been shown to achieve four year degrees at much higher rates than students from public school and private schools.

The benefits don’t stop there. Whereas the average total expenditures for a child in public school is near $10,000 a year, those for the homeschooled child average is somewhere between $500 and $600 a year. So not only does homeschooling provide educational benefits, but it provides financial payoffs as well.

But what about socialization? Homeschooled children are considered by many to lack basic social skills, supporters of homeschooling claim this is not true. The National Home Education Research Institute claims that homeschooled children have actually shown to become more socially engaged individuals than their peers, showing “healthy social, psychological, and emotional development, and success into adulthood.”

So what might the future bring? Will more parents opt for homeschooling than public schooling? And what can be done to stop the apparent downfalls in public schooling?

1. The underlined words “Oh, they’re homeschooled” in Para. 1 suggests that parents__________.

A．are proud of their own children	B．respect homeschooled kids
C．don’t accept socially awkward kids	D．have a low opinion on homeschooling

2. From Para. 2 we know that the trend of homeschooling __________.

A．is worrying	B．is on the rise
C．remains consistent	D．is going downward

3. The statistics in Para. 3 is used to show__________.

A．homeschooled kids do better

B．public school education is more effective

C．homeschooled children earn higher GPS at college

D．public school children score in the 50th percentile

4. The author’s attitude towards homeschooling is __________.

A．critical

B．negative

C．supportive

D．neutral

4 . 阅读下而短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Is It the Pig from Angry Birds?

An ancient clay pig statue has become     1     hot topic, for it looked exactly like Green Pig, a main character in Angry Birds, a popular mobile game. The artwork     2     (discover)under the ruins of an ancient settlement     3     (date)back nearly 5,000 years in south-western China.

Archaeologists(考古学家）found the tiny pig statue     4     (accident)while digging in the remains of a small ancient community outside Guanghan in Sichuan province.

The village was situated about eight kilometres outside Sanxingdui, a Bronze Age kingdom.     5     likely came into being around 5,000 years ago, and the pig statue is thought to be 3,200 years old. The pig statue has been described     6     “cute,vivid and delicate” by the researchers, who say it represents the advanced standards of the region’s prehistoric residents.

Chinese Internet users expressed their amazement. On Weibo, one person expressed his     7     (admire) excitedly: “It is the pig from Angry Birds!” Another commenter joked: “The pig in Angry Birds. You have infringed (侵犯) the copyright.”

The research team claimed     8     (find) tracks of continuous human activity on this site from 5,000 years ago to the    9     (dynasty) of Ming and Qing. Officials plan to dig 7,000 square metres of the site, which is officially named Guanghan Joint Ruins. By the end of June, they     10     (dig) 4,500 square metres.

5 . 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。续写的词数应为150左右。

Finding Your Courage

Gold and brown leaves crunched（吱吱响）under Dora's boots as she made her way down the sidewalk. She could not wait to be home. The chill（寒冷）from the autumn winds was bad, but it was not nearly as hard to bear as the chill she felt in her heart.

She could not forget the way she had frozen in front of the class today. Mr. Roberts divided the class into groups to do presentations. Each person in the group would speak for five minutes in front of the class. Today was Dora's turn. Her legs trembled（颤抖）all the way to the front of the classroom. Her hands shook so badly that she could not read her notes. As Dora spoke, her voice became softer, almost to silence. Mr. Roberts kindly ended Dora's part of the presentation even though she had clearly not finished. He also asked Dora to stay after class for a moment.

“Dora, I know you're shy, but you worked hard on this project. I'd hate to see you give up on yourself. ” Mr. Roberts suggested, “If I give you another chance tomorrow, do you think you can find your courage?”

Dora nodded. She went as quickly as she could to her next class. She kept her head down and hoped the school day would end soon.

Arriving home, she found Mom baking in the kitchen. When Mom baked, Dora always watched and chatted with her. Mom always said it was Dora's company that made her baked goods taste so sweet.

Mom studied Dora's face as she came into the kitchen. “What's wrong, Dora?"

Tears shone in Dora's brown eyes. She told the whole story. Mom was silent for a moment, but her hands still busy with the cake.

“Why is it that you can talk to me about anything and everything, but you can't talk to your class?" Mom asked, sliding the round cake pans into the oven. She set the timer and then said, “Let me show you something. ”

Paragraph 1:

Dora followed Momma to her bedroom.

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Paragraph 2:

The next day Dora again walked to the front of the classroom to give her presentation.                  

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6 . For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict between neighboring countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I control and what you do?

Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. In part, this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for starting it. From the parents’ point of view, the only cause of their fight is their adolescents’ complete unreasonableness. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except oppositely. Both feel trapped.

In this article, I’ll describe three no-win situations that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the trap. The first no-win situation is quarrels over unimportant things. Examples include the color of the teen’s hair, the cleanliness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child’s failure to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is—politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg—the point of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong, for both wish to be considered an authority—someone who actually knows something—and therefore to command respect. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they know more than the other, they’ll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.

1. Why does the author compare the parent-teen war to a border conflict?

A．Both are about where to draw the line.

B．Both can continue for generations.

C．Neither has any clear winner.

D．Neither can be put to an end.

2. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 2 mean?

A．The teens tend to have a full understanding of their parents.

B．The teens agree with their parents on the cause of the conflict.

C．The teens cause their parents of misleading them.

D．The teens blame their parents for starting the conflict.

3. Parents and teens want to be right because they want to ______.

A．give orders to the other

B．know more than the other

C．gain respect from the other

D．get the other to behave properly

4. What will the author most probably discuss in the paragraph that follows?

A．Solutions for the parent-teen problems.

B．Examples of the parent-teen war.

C．Causes for the parent-teen conflicts.

D．Future of the parent-teen relationship.

7 . It’s a Saturday night, the kids are asleep and we have no plans. Before we fall into our routine and watch a movie, I try to talk my husband into playing a card game. Unconvinced, he continues tapping away on his phone. But just before disappearing into the social media rabbit hole, he has an idea. He looks over me and suggests, “Why don’t we try calling one of our friends?”

I look at him with raised brows, as if his suggestion is somewhat ridiculous and perhaps even socially unacceptable. You can’t just call someone out of the blue now…right? But then I realize in the not so distant past, this was the norm. My early teenage years saw me connecting with friends through a phone. We could chat for hours about the latest gossip and news, sometimes hiding under my blanket in order to avoid the chances of being caught by my parents. I could even memorize the phone numbers of loved ones then. I guess these days, they would be on my “Favorites” list in my smartphone.

Today, many of my “favorite” people are followed from a distance through social media, and even they very rarely—if ever—would get an actual call from me. The birth announcement by my oldest friend is received through scrolling the past pictures. The news of a divorce from a couple arrives after a photo of a woman led me on a search for more gossip. Bits of such information, may have been a part of my digital feed for years. The idea of actually picking up the phone to reconnect with a long-lost friend is a frightening one—even seeing the name of an old friend pop up in an incoming call can feel a little afraid.

I ask my husband, “Who would we call?” After tossing around a few names, we agree on some potential candidates—people whose lives have taken them in different directions, but with whom we still share deep friendships.

1. How does the author feel about her husband’s suggestion at first?

A．Excited.	B．Motivated.
C．Nervous.	D．Surprised.

2. With the phone, the author’s teenage years was_____.

A．difficult but interesting	B．peaceful and meaningful
C．pleasant and unforgettable	D．inconvenient but enjoyable

3. In the following days, the couple may ____.

A．share more of their private information with others

B．contact more long-lost friends through social media

C．have more personal communications with their friends

D．add more friends’ names to the contact lists in their phones

4. What’s the purpose of the passage?

A．To argue for the need of the contact of long-lost old friends.

B．To tell us about one of his unforgettable experiences.

C．To remind us to turn to phones to keep in touch with friends.

D．To persuade us to follow our friends through the social media.

8 . A Great Way to Teach Children to Take Responsibility

As parents, one of the most important things to teach children to take responsibility is to include chores as a part of their daily routine. In order to make a family function smoothly, every member must contribute. Teaching your children to take responsibility at an early age makes it easier for them to shoulder greater responsibilities as they grow older.

    1     If your children leave their crayons lying on the table after drawing, picking up those crayons is not a chore. It is cleaning up a mess they have created.     2    

    3    . For example, if it is to feed the dog every day, make   sure   the   children understand that if they fail in their responsibility, the dog will go hungry.

Make rewards and punishments a part of the lesson. Together decide whether they will be rewarded or not.     4     Some parents make their reward a monetary payment, while others choose to reward with certain privileges, such as extra television viewing time.

Children need to be taught that there are punishments for their actions in case of not doing their assigned chores. Decide and agree from the start what the punishment will be.

Teaching your children the importance of contributing to the family is of great importance.     5     By taking this step, you have done a wonderful thing for your children by providing them with life skills they can take with them into society.

A．A chore is a specific task a child has been assigned which helps improve the life of the entire family.

B．And what punishment they will receive if a chore isn’t done.

C．Actually you are taking a critical step in empowering them for their future.

D．Start by teaching children the difference between a chore and cleaning up after themselves.

E．Teach children the importance of each assignment, and why it matters.

F．Children will not be rewarded at all for merely cleaning up.

G．And if so, what the reward will be for a job well done.

9 . 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.

The family who eats together

What’s the price of a family meal? For many families in the world’s wealthiest countries, the answer seems to be, ‘too much’. For instance, in the United States,     1     is often a trendsetter in such things, the majority of families report eating a single meal together fewer than five days a week. In fact, the frequency of shared meals     2     (decrease) in American families by 33 per cent over the last twenty years. The meals     3     have shortened too: from an average of 90 minutes to just 12 minutes.

So perhaps we’re better off asking ourselves     4     the cost of not eating together is. Once again, we could turn to the figures. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that 15-year-olds who reported not regularly     5     (share) family meals were twice as likely to be absent from school. In Europe, research has suggested that children who don’t eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week face a 40 per cent higher risk of fatness. Another study,     6     (conduct) by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (滥用) at Columbia University, found that kids who eat dinner with their parents five or more times a week are     7     (likely) to have problems with drugs and alcohol.

But those numbers, impressive     8     they seem, may be beside the point. After all, having a meal together is more than just a preventive measure     9     future misfortune. The primary cost of the family meal is also the very thing that makes it important: time.

The time spent together over food leads to all the positive outcomes that are measured in the studies. That time spent together has less noticeable—but no less real—effects too. So often,     10     is at the family meal that the family as such—the family as an organic unit with shared memories and feelings and ambitions—is made.

10 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

China will emerge stronger from the coronavirus challenge, experts said at a seminar here on Tuesday, while     1     (praise) China’s efforts to stop the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic (传染病).

Speaking at the seminar     2       (title) “Battling Coronavirus, ”Sumit Mullick，chief information commissioner of India’s southwestern state of Maharashtra, said that China has created a new criterion in addressing a health issue by quarantining (隔离) Wuhan, the epicenter city of the virus outbreak.

“The coronavirus does not understand or respect borders. It does not need a visa or passport.” Mullick said. “Challenges are     3     (true) in global in nature. ”

However, Chinese labs have quickly decoded the genetic sequence of the coronavirus and shared it with the world,     4     is now working on a new vaccine, he said.

R. N. Bhaskar, a senior journalist and consulting editor with Indian English newspaper Free Press Journal, said that China is doing all it can       5     (contain) the spread of the virus and create a vaccine.

“As       6     very big player in the global economy, there will be negative impact     7     the Chinese economy for a temporary period. However, thanks to the swift responses to the virus outbreak, the Chinese economy will overcome this crisis and emerge stronger,” he added.

Health officials at the panel discussion also listed the steps       8     (take) to fight the virus and shared their experiences in countering misinformation and creating       9       (aware) among the public at large.

The event       10     (organize) jointly by the Observer Research Foundation, a think-tank body, along with the Chinese Consulate General in Mumbai.