1 . It was a regular school day, and the air was filled with the usual sounds of chatter and laughter as students prepared for their lessons. Little did I know that this day would soon take a
As the bell rang, signaling the beginning of our English class, we entered the classroom, completely
Panic spread as we understood how
In all the chaos, I noticed my
As we reached the door, it felt hotter, and we knew we had to hurry. With hearts
Outside, we took a moment to catch our breath,
After everything happened, I couldn’t help but reflect on the events of that day.
A.classic | B.dramatic | C.powerful | D.graceful |
A.independent | B.tolerant | C.fluent | D.unaware |
A.into | B.onto | C.behind | D.against |
A.destroyed | B.interrupted | C.buried | D.sheltered |
A.formal | B.unique | C.severe | D.awkward |
A.hurried | B.delivered | C.jogged | D.hesitated |
A.sister | B.mother | C.classmate | D.teammate |
A.protested | B.reminded | C.stressed | D.realized |
A.flight | B.step | C.wave | D.foot |
A.racing | B.debating | C.suffering | D.begging |
A.greeted | B.conducted | C.surrounded | D.attracted |
A.stress | B.sadness | C.confidence | D.relief |
A.Breaking through | B.Going through | C.Making out | D.Working out |
A.tough | B.plain | C.various | D.specific |
A.contribution | B.ambition | C.determination | D.addiction |
2 . In the race to catch up with the changing time, we are forgetting how to live without the support of our phones, laptops, and tablets.
The first thing you need to do to unplug is to turn off your phone notifications. As soon as we hear a notification drop on our phones — whether it is something of importance or not — we are attracted to check it. When you’re not working and are not required to call, text, or return an email, turn off your phone (or put it on silent mode).
I know it’s hard to stay away from your phone when it keeps buzzing with incoming texts, calls, and emails.
One of the best ways that I believe can help you disconnect is being in nature.
A.Keep track of how much time you’re spending on your phone. |
B.This way you won’t be tempted and keep getting distracted. |
C.Take a walk in the park near you or your garden without your phone. |
D.When feeling bored, we often look for our phones to overcome our boredom. |
E.Here are some simple ways you can disconnect and unplug for a more mindful living. |
F.Therefore, setting a boundary on what to reply, and when to reply should be important. |
G.Disconnecting from technology can be very helpful for quality time with your beloved ones. |
3 . Survivor bias (偏见,偏差), occurs when you tend to assess successful outcomes and disregard failures. This sampling bias paints a more promising or even misleading picture of reality.
Survivor bias is a sneaky problem that tends to slip into analyses unnoticed. For starters, it feels natural to emphasize success, whether it’s entrepreneurs, or survivors of a medical condition. We focus on and share these stories more than the failures.
Think about the famous college dropouts who became highly successful, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. These successful examples might make you think a college degree isn’t beneficial. However, that’s survivor bias at work! These famous individuals are at the forefront of media reports. You hear more about them because they are extraordinary. You’re not considering the millions of other college dropouts that aren’t rich and famous. You need to assess their outcomes as well.
Survivor bias has even occurred in medical studies about severe diseases. Younger, healthier, and more fit patients tend to survive a disease’s initial diagnosis more frequently. Hence, they are more likely to join medical studies. On the contrary, older, weaker patients are less likely to survive long enough to participate in studies. Consequently, these studies overestimate successful disease outcomes because they are less likely to include those who die shortly after diagnosis.
Undeniably, successful cases are usually more visible and easier to contact than unsuccessful cases. However, focusing on the high-performing successes and disregarding other cases introduces survivor bias. After all, you’re leaving out a significant part of the picture as it’s harder to collect data from the less successful members of a population. Incomplete data can affect your decision-making process. Put simply, survivor bias produces an inaccurate sample, causing you to jump to incorrect conclusions.
To minimize the impact of survivor bias, you should find ways to draw a representative sample from the population, not just a few of successful samples. That process might call for more expense and effort, but you’ll get better results.
1. What writing technique is used in Paragraphs 3 and 4?A.Making comparisons. | B.Giving examples. |
C.Describing facts. | D.Analyzing data. |
A.You will take all factors into account before making a final analysis. |
B.You will overestimate the failure rate so you may quit your project. |
C.You will only have partial data and reach an incorrect conclusion. |
D.You will be more likely to survive in unfavorable circumstances. |
A.People tend to lose sight of the overall statistics. |
B.People are unwilling to read unsuccessful stories. |
C.Doctors don’t have enough expense to collect abundant samples. |
D.The media should be responsible for kids’ dropping out of school. |
A.Leave out the famous historic cases. |
B.Collect a wide enough range of samples. |
C.Focus on those most mentioned examples. |
D.Select some successful and inspiring tales. |
4 . Please sit down and enjoy your meal. Just don’t talk about it.
These are the requirements at a popular dining party that is known as “silent dinners”. It encourages people who take part in the dining party not to speak for one to two hours and not to use electronic devices. Instead, the idea is to just on the food.
“Silent dinner parties are fast growing, ” said Honi Ryan, who has hosted 32 silent dinner parties in 11 cities across eight countries, including Germany, Australia and the United States. “The way we communicate is changing so fast that we need to stop and think about it. ”
According to a 2013 nationwide survey, restaurant noise came in second only to poor service among customer (顾客) complaints. And 19 percent of diners who took part in the survey said noise and crowds disturbed them most while eating out.
Though silent dinners may seem curious, the idea is not a new one. Yogis (瑜伽信徒) have long enjoyed silent meals as part of a deepened practice. In fact, it was a trip to a temple (寺庙) in India by a man that encouraged one Brooklyn restaurant recently to add a silent dinner to its event programming.
“We’ll make a small speech at the beginning of the meal to make sure everyone understands what is happening and ask them not to speak or use their mobile phones for at least an hour, ” said EAT Greenpoint owner Jordan Colon. And background music will be turned off, too.
“It’s funny; when I first opened EAT, I didn’t play music for some time and people had very different reactions (反映) to that,” said Colon. “Some people who come out to eat are ready to party, but it was so quiet without music. But I wanted to create an environment that makes you relaxed. ”
Although personal reactions to a silent dinner may be various, in general they are more likely to get into a lot of talk afterwards, said Ryan. “At the end of the night people always have a lot to say about silence. But the most reaction is that there is always a good laugh.”
1. The first paragraph is written to be a(n)____ .A.Conclusion | B.Introduction |
C.Argument | D.warning |
A.leave before they finish eating | B.just pay attention to the food |
C.use a mobile phone or listen to music | D.take electronic devices to the party |
A.Silent meals help people live longer. |
B.Yogis are the first to hold silent dinners. |
C.More and more people like eating in silence. |
D.The idea of eating in silence appeared long ago. |
A.make people comfortable and relaxed | B.are hard to be accepted by most people |
C.can help him to attract more customers | D.provide a chance to get to know others |
5 . Mr. Peter Johnson, aged twenty-three, fought for half an hour to escape from his trapped car yesterday when it landed upside down in three feet of water. Mr. Johnson took the only escape way — through the boot(行李箱).
Mr. Johnson’s car had finished up in a ditch(沟渠) at Romney, Kentucky, after skidding on ice and hitting a bank. “Fortunately, the water began to come in only slowly,” Mr. Johnson said, “I couldn’t force the doors because they were jammed against the walls of the ditch and dared not open the windows because I knew water would come flooding in.”
Mr. Johnson, first tried to attract the attention of other motorists by sounding the horn(喇叭) and hammering on the roof and boot but failed. Then he began to use his own efforts to escape.
Later he said, “It was really a half penny that saved my life. It was the only coin I had in my pocket and I used it to unscrew(旋松) the back seat to get into the boot. I hammered hard with a hammer trying to make someone hear, but no help came.”
It took ten minutes to unscrew the seat, and a further five minutes to clear the boot. Then Mr. Johnson found a wrench(扳手) and began to work on the boot lock. Fifteen minutes passed by. “It was the only chance I had. Finally it gave, but as soon as I unlocked the boot, the water and mud poured in.
His hands and arms cut and hurt,Mr. Johnson got to Beckett Farm nearby, where he was looked after by the farmer’s wife, Mrs. Lucy Bates. Trembling in a blanket, he said, “That thirty minutes seemed like hours.” Only the car wheels could be seen, the police said last night. The vehicle had sunk into two feet of mud at the bottom of the ditch.
1. What happened to Mr. Johnson in the story?A.He was lost in the ditch. | B.He was rescued by the police. |
C.Water came flooding into his car. | D.His car was trapped in the ditch. |
A.luckily the door was taken away in the end | B.at last the wrench went broken |
C.the lock came open after all his efforts | D.the chance was lost at the last minute |
A.the ditch was along a quiet country road |
B.the accident happened on a clear warm day |
C.the police helped Mr. Johnson get out of the ditch |
D.Mr. Johnson had a tender wife and was well attended |
BE A GOOD TOURIST
Tourism can be both good and bad. Yes, it brings in money for the local economy and creates lots of jobs for locals,
One growing problem is that tourists intend
There is no doubt that
7 . Experts say over half of the world’s seven thousand languages are in danger of disappearing. Every two weeks one language disappears.
Sometimes a language disappears immediately when the last person speaking it dies. Or, a local language might disappear more slowly. This happens when an official language is used more often and children stop learning the local language of their parents. Official languages often represent a form of control over a group of people.
Throughout history, the language spoken by a powerful group spreads across a civilization. The more powerful culture rarely respects the language and culture of smaller groups. Smaller cultures lose their local language as the language of the culture in power has a stronger influence.
Experts say protecting languages is very important for many reasons. Languages contain the histories, ideas and knowledge of a culture. Languages also contain valuable information about local medicines, plants and animals.
Many endangered languages are spoken by native cultures in close contact with the natural world. Their ancient languages contain a great deal of information about environmental systems and species of plants and animals that are unknown to scientists. As the last speakers of a language die off, the valuable information carried within a language also disappears. Language is, in many ways, a window to the mind and the world.
Any hope for protecting languages can be found in children and their willingness to learn. It is these young people who can keep this form of culture alive for future generations.
1. Which of the following is true?A.There have existed 7,000 languages in history. |
B.No one can prevent languages from disappearing. |
C.There will not be any local languages left some day. |
D.Half of the world’s languages will possibly disappear. |
A.it represents the working of the human minds |
B.local languages are more closely related to culture |
C.ancient languages can reveal ancient people’s thoughts |
D.it contains information about both culture and nature |
A.children are interested in learning it | B.people are forced to speak it |
C.it is linked to a powerful culture | D.it keeps pace with the times |
A.local languages | B.language protection |
C.the power of language | D.language and culture |
8 . Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, this week expressed optimism for a glorious Summer Games this year in Tokyo, where the world, in his view, will reunite after defeating the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet nine months after the IOC and organizers in Tokyo agreed to postpone (推迟) the 2020 Summer Games for one year, the level of uncertainty surrounding the event has hardly waned, despite the fact that hopes for a successful Olympics have never been higher.
Will Japan open its borders (边境), which have been largely closed since April, and allow the friends and families of Olympians, or any fans for that matter, to attend the Games? Will the Olympic Village, where most of the athletes and support staff usually live during the Games, function as a kind of bubble, with access to the city cut off? Will athletes have to quarantine (隔离) either in their home countries ahead of the Games or in Japan once they arrive?
Japan has spent more than $12 billion preparing for the Olympics, although some estimates have put the actual figure at roughly $26 billion, including infrastructure projects (基础建设工程). Postponing the Games for a year has cost organizers more than $1 billion. The IOC doubled its contribution to Tokyo organizers to $1.6 billion, to help cover the costs.
The overall budget includes $800 million from sales of some 7.8 million in tickets. For a typical Summer Games, overseas customers can account for about 30% of ticket sales. It’s hard to predict just how much financial loss Japan will suffer with a lack of overseas travelers to the Olympics.
1. Which of the following statements will Thomas Bach agree with?A.The Summer Olympic Games is unlikely to be held. |
B.The Summer Olympic Games will be held this year. |
C.The Summer Olympic Games is supposed to be put off for one more year. |
D.The Summer Olympic Games shouldn’t be held because of the coronavirus pandemic. |
A.Reduced. | B.Strengthened. | C.Widened. | D.Enriched. |
A.All the borders of Japan have been closed since April. |
B.Overseas customers account for most of ticket sales. |
C.Japan has suffered a lot from postponing the Games for a year. |
D.The Olympic Village is usually used to quarantine athletes and staff. |
A.Newspaper. | B.A travel brochure. |
C.A historic book. | D.A geography magazine. |
A 17-year-old Bangladeshi boy has won this year's International Children's Peace Prize for his work to fight cyberbullying in
The prize winner, Sadat Rahman, promised to keep
Rahman developed a mobile phone
The award comes with
1. How many things did the girl bring to the boy?
A.Two. | B.Three. | C.Four. |
A.On the way back home. |
B.On the way to an airport. |
C.On the way to the hospital. |
A.The doctors. | B.The food. | C.The nurses |