1 . I enjoy throwing stuff away. I’d love to go full minimalism (极简主义), but my wife and two teenage kids do not share my dream of a house with almost nothing in it. I have tried. When the kids were little, I taught them my two favorite games – “Do We Need It?” and “Put It in Its Place”– and made them play every few months. Their enthusiasm never matched mine.
If I’m going to be honest, my own tidying skills are not as great as I’d like. My “discarded” pile is never quite the trash mountain I want because I make up excuses for why things are useful. I consider this unhealthy. I want to be better at moving on.
So, this time I found help – the classics for people like me: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. Kondo’s commitment to her craft is astonishing. Her philosophy is only to keep things you love. Can I go full Kondo? I will try. One central idea is to clean by category. You start by collecting all clothes and gathering them together for consideration. It makes you rethink how you organize. Next, hold each item and ask if it brings you joy. This way you’re choosing what to keep. And that’s how I find myself with all my clothes on my bedroom floor. My wife walks by and gives me a look that says I’m nuts. She’s probably not wrong.
Somewhere near the bottom of this chaos is my special jacket. I move through the pile: pants, shirts, suits and shoes. Then my last category: jackets. I haven’t worn the thing in about 30 years. Somehow, it has survived. Now that I’m striving to follow Kondo – surely, its time has come?
I hold it in my hand. There is a tear just below the collar that widens as I hold it. It’s literally falling apart. Will I ever wear it again? Not a chance. Does it feel good to wear? Does it bring me joy? Actually, yes. At this moment, my daughter walks in. She asks about the jacket. I tell her the story. She thinks I should keep it. It’s cool and unique and full of memories. She is arguing that nostalgia (怀念) is the very reason.
I’m not entirely convinced by my daughter’s arguments. I believe in looking ahead, not backward. Nevertheless, sometimes it’s hard to let go. So I gently place the jacket on the “keep” pile.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” probably mean in Paragraph 2?| A．adjusted | B．reserved | C．abandoned | D．tidied |
| A．To learn how to categorize. | B．To improve his tidying skills. |
| C．To persuade his family members. | D．To develop passion for minimalism. |
| A．They don’t understand it. | B．They completely support it. |
| C．They are strongly opposed to it. | D．They are less passionate about it. |
| A．Knowing when to let go | B．Classifying what you love |
| C．Throwing worn-out clothes | D．Keeping valuable possessions |
2 . Years ago, my sixth grade teacher had us write letters to our heroes.
In that
I didn’t want to seem like a crazy fan. So I
It was from Jennifer. We
During the conversation, we realized we
Jennifer Cihi, my early hero,
| A．Whether | B．While | C．Unless | D．Once |
| A．write | B．receive | C．mail | D．open |
| A．found out | B．missed out | C．piled up | D．put away |
| A．fan | B．business | C．reminder | D．introduction |
| A．letter | B．book | C．present | D．song |
| A．secret | B．balance | C．word | D．appointment |
| A．gradually | B．suddenly | C．generally | D．quickly |
| A．comfort | B．appreciate | C．envy | D．encounter |
| A．embarrassed | B．thrilled | C．astonished | D．amused |
| A．eventually | B．gently | C．slowly | D．merely |
| A．allowed | B．expected | C．inspired | D．advised |
| A．teacher | B．singer | C．presenter | D．supporter |
| A．instant | B．consistent | C．constant | D．insistent |
| A．signaled | B．declared | C．explained | D．marked |
| A．published | B．discussed | C．exchanged | D．expressed |
| A．by | B．in | C．at | D．on |
| A．shared | B．formed | C．needed | D．promoted |
| A．controlling | B．providing | C．attracting | D．demanding |
| A．described | B．selected | C．considered | D．designed |
| A．however | B．besides | C．though | D．again |
3 . Age is truly just a number if our hearts are young. Lee Minor, an 85-year-old retired psychologist, has
“I like to run in all kinds of
Minor’s enthusiasm for running is
Last fall, Robert graduated from the university, despite the challenges of his illness. “When I went across the stage, and as I’m getting my
The stories of Minor and Robert are reminders that age and illness need not
| A．proven | B．approved | C．won | D．imagined |
| A．starting | B．center | C．finishing | D．bottom |
| A．depressed | B．thrilled | C．calm | D．uneasy |
| A．weather | B．zones | C．illness | D．phases |
| A．position | B．footprints | C．reflections | D．route |
| A．infectious | B．temporary | C．blind | D．restricted |
| A．wait | B．abandon | C．exist | D．run |
| A．award | B．suspend | C．quit | D．pursue |
| A．powerful | B．visible | C．boring | D．accurate |
| A．uniform | B．application | C．certificate | D．license |
| A．slid away | B．gave up | C．broke in | D．choked out |
| A．emotional | B．identical | C．financial | D．abstract |
| A．enjoy | B．reject | C．doubt | D．expect |
| A．save | B．define | C．distinguish | D．witness |
| A．scholarship | B．fitness | C．passion | D．career |
4 . Misty Copeland spends most days twisting, spinning and
“I treat my body with the respect that any musician would to their
Was she
Over the next five years, ballet was Misty’s
| A．wandering | B．leaping | C．exercising | D．dancing |
| A．perfects | B．conquers | C．examines | D．describes |
| A．hurt | B．injure | C．spoil | D．abuse |
| A．appearance | B．voice | C．techniques | D．instruments |
| A．found | B．made | C．born | D．trained |
| A．humble | B．quiet | C．cautious | D．shy |
| A．attend | B．register | C．learn | D．watch |
| A．stand up | B．catch up | C．cut in | D．join in |
| A．rest | B．chance | C．try | D．thought |
| A．out of place | B．out of order | C．out of mind | D．out of control |
| A．younger | B．older | C．taller | D．shorter |
| A．meanwhile | B．however | C．moreover | D．thus |
| A．ready | B．good | C．right | D．qualified |
| A．life | B．major | C．prospect | D．stage |
| A．improved | B．calm | C．free | D．secure |
It was exam time at Marc’s school. Every day, their teachers gave them loads of homework and told them the test was very important and that they ought to spare no effort to perform well in it. Everyone followed the teachers’ instructions and made preparations for it, except Marc. He just turned a deaf ear to it. He thought he would rather play football than study.
His mum and dad repeated the importance of revision for exams over and over again. They told him that he should be working hard preparing for the test. But the weather was sunny and he thought he had better things to do.
“Shall we go to the park?” he said to his friend Huck one afternoon. “It’s a nice day. We could play football and kick around.” Huck shook his head. “I’m supposed to review my lessons,” he said. “I’m going home to do some math.”
Marc was amazed. “You’d rather do math than play football?”
“Math is important. Besides, my mum says she will buy me a mountain bike if I do well in the math exam.”
“That’s crazy,” said Marc. Huck shrugged (耸肩) and replied, “Wait until I beat you in the test and you will watch me riding past on my mountain bike!”
“You won’t beat me,” said Marc.
“Oh yes, I will.”
“Oh no, you won’t! That will never happen. Just wait and see!”
For the first time ever, Marc wanted to perform well. He couldn’t bear it if his friend came top and he did badly. So when he got home, he opened his math book. But there was so much to do. All of a sudden, he felt like he’d forgotten everything he had learned that year! He didn’t know where to start. When his sister Lily came in, he was sitting expressionlessly by the desk, just staring out of the window.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式作答。
“You don’t look happy, Marc. What’s wrong?” she said.
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On the day of the exam, Marc went to school with great confidence.
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As a nurse at the cancer care center where I’ve worked for seven years, I’ll do almost anything to make a patient feel better. But when I met Patty at the center, in 2011, she didn’t want my help.
She was a tiny 44-year-old single mom battling an aggressive head and neck cancer. Unlike many of our other patients, Patty was alone during her treatment, but no matter what I did. I couldn't get her to open up. She just buried herself in book or pulled a blanket over her head to fend off conversation.
Eventually I hit on a reliable way to make Patty smile: mentioning her nine-year-old son, Stephen. She'd tell me how well he did in school, how he'd been selected to read a poem he wrote at a local bookstore. She desperately wanted to live for him. With three kids myself, I totally understood how she felt.
After a year and a half of treatment, in August 2012, Patty was told her cancer had spread, and I learned she wouldn't live much longer. My first thought was, “What's going to happen to Stephen?”
Nurses at the center shared stories at their meetings about how bright and unusual the boy was. but no one seemed to know how to resolve the issue of what would happen to him when his mom died. My husband, Michael, who too works at the center, started hearing about Patty and Stephen.
One morning in October, Patty quietly slipped away. Michael and I picked Stephen up after school, drove him to a nearby park, and sat on a bench by a pond. I finally managed to say, “Stephen, we're sorry to have to tell you this, but your mom came to an end this morning.” The sound that came out of his mouth was like nothing I'd ever heard before. This skinny little guy sat between the two of us and just wailed (哀号) and wailed. It was as if his whole world was just destroyed.
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。
Something inside me was telling me what to do.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Finally, we took him home with us.
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I remember being happy for my friend Avery when she won the karate (空手道) championship we’d both competed in. But I’m embarrassed to admit I was also pretty envious! But when she and I tried out for Alice in Wonderland, though, things went the opposite way.
“I really hope I get picked to be Alice,” said Avery.
“You’d make a great Alice!” I said. “I don’t care what part I get as long as I’m in it.” “So you’d be happy to have a small part like the Dormouse?” she asked.
“Exactly!” I said.
A few days later, Avery and I raced over to the theater office, where the director had posted the cast list.
“Wow!” said Avery. “You got the part of Alice and I got the part of the Dormouse.”
“That can’t be right,” I said. “There must be some mistake!”
But I really and truly was given the part of Alice. I’m pretty sure the reason I’d done well is that I hadn’t been nervous at all during the audition (试镜). And the reason I hadn’t been nervous is that it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could get the major role.
“Do you want to come over after school and we can practice our lines?” I asked.
“You mean practice your lines?” Avery said, not even looking at me. “No, thanks. I’m pretty busy this week.”
“OK,” I said. “How about some day next week?”
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m pretty sure I’m busy forever.”
That night at dinner, after my parents congratulated me for getting the lead role, they asked how I felt about it.
“Well, I’m confused,” I said. “Avery was so upset that I was picked to be Alice, she pretty much threw away our friendship.”
“Hmm,” said my mum. “Arizona, don’t you think this might be an opportunity for you to be an extra-good friend?” “Sometimes when our friends do well, we feel envious and don’t know how to act. Try giving her a little time and understanding. I bet she’ll come around before too long.”
Over the following rehearsals (排练), Avery kept ignoring me on purpose.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
She smiled. “I think I might be free on Thursday.”
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8 . A British woman, Dr. Mantri, growing up in India started to notice his son, Dhruv, was struggling with simple arithmetic when he was in fifth-grade. After noticing this, she started employing an abacus (算盘) to help her son visually comprehend mathematics.
“I would ask him something like 35 minus 13 and he couldn’t do it.” said Dhruv’s mom Dr. Mantri. “I decided to change the way he looked at numbers,” she said. “An abacus is a tried and tested method, and the Egyptians used them for building the pyramid.” In just six days he started to show progress with the abacus and would go on to become a whizz kid with numbers, with even his classmates’ parents reaching out for help.
She never thought she would teach her son using an abacus, which she used as a child in India and it was always helpful. Within six days she started to notice a difference and see results. So dramatic was the turnaround, that school staff asked him to perform with the abacus at an assembly, where some parents even came to ask for advice on using it for their kids.
IT specialist Dr. Mantri said the humble abacus can be used for calculations into the trillions and kids enjoy learning on it because it’s like a game. “It becomes a playing tool for younger children, for it feels like a game. I think the success comes because children can touch and feel an abacus and visualize them.” She added.
By the age of 12, Dhruv was giving online cyber security seminars and is now pursuing a career in data science and analytics. Dhruv has now landed an apprenticeship (实习) at an international firm. During the four-year apprenticeship, he will spend one day a week studying Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Glasgow Caledonian University. “He is so confident now and I am so proud,” she said, with Dhruv adding “I don’t think my teachers would have guessed that I would be following a career in data science at that time.”
1. Why did Dhruv have difficulty in learning mathematics?| A．He was faced with language barrier. | B．He didn’t find a proper way. |
| C．He suffered from eyesight problems. | D．He lacked academic support from the family. |
| A．Careful. | B．Diligent. | C．Outstanding. | D．Struggling. |
| A．They find it appealing. | B．They can calculate faster. |
| C．They enjoy playing games. | D．They are eager for success. |
| A．Dhruv was addicted to the internet at 12. |
| B．Dhruv is teaching data science and analytics now. |
| C．Dhruv is a full-time student at Glasgow Caledonian University. |
| D．Dhruv’s career choice was beyond his teachers’ expectation. |
9 . My childhood was a painted picture of sunny sky and rolling green fields stretching to the horizon. It tasted of sharp berries and smelt of sour grapes. My family lived in a cabin(小木屋) in the countryside but I lived in my mother’s arms. They were so delicate but strong, her red hair falling around me like a curtain separating me from the world.
Childhood was simple. The borders of my village were the furthest my troubles went and monsters only lived in the pages of books. Every day was a waking dream of running races and muddy knees. My village was archaic, dying cabins housing dying farmers with dying traditions. There weren’t many children but me and the other boys; boys of butchers and sellers formed our own group.
They called us wild. I suppose we were. Trees and mountains formed our playgrounds and fights broke out as easily as sudden laughter. Liberated from the restrictions of society, we would bound into the woods, deeper and deeper until we found a lake which, with a wild yell, we would jump into all at once.
My most vivid memories from boyhood center around that lake. Water shone brightly and the sounds of our screams broke into the outcry from birds. The shock of cold water against sweating skin would wake every nerve in my body and my bare feet would hit the sinking muddy bottom. As we submerged(淹没)， time would suspend， movements slowing as bubbles rose around us.
I was drowning. I was living. I was living. I was drowning.
For timelessness or a second (both felt the same), we would suspend, curl up, and then be forced back out into breathing air.
We should have known that it wouldn’t last forever. Yet, even under the best circumstances, there’s something so tragic about growing up: to have your perspective on the people and life around you change;to always struggle to reach a mirror only to find yourself tall enough to see your reflection one day. And find, a different person staring back out at you.
1. What does the underlined word “archaic” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Borderless. |
| B．Valueless. |
| C．Old-fashioned. |
| D．Poverty-stricken. |
| A．They played in the woods crazily. |
| B．They tricked others purposefully. |
| C．They frequently broke social rules. |
| D．They firmly refused school education. |
| A．By sharing feelings. |
| B．By expressing ideas. |
| C．By making comparisons. |
| D．By describing characters. |
| A．Loneliness and challenges make a man grow up. |
| B．The regret of growth is that you have never tried. |
| C．Growth is often accompanied by sad goodbyes to the past. |
| D．Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness. |
10 . Eliana Yi dreamed of pursuing piano performance in college, never mind that her fingers could barely reach the length of an octave (八度音阶). Unable to fully play many works by Romantic-era composers, including Beethoven and Brahms, she tried anyway — and in her determination to spend hours practicing one of Chopin’s compositions which is known for being “stretchy”, wound up injuring herself.
“I would just go to pieces,” the Southern Methodist University junior recalled. “There were just too many octaves. I wondered whether I was just going to play Bach and Mozart for the rest of my life.”
The efforts of SMU keyboard studies chair Carol Leone are changing all that. Twenty years ago, the school became the first major university in the U.S. to incorporate smaller keyboards into its music program, leveling the playing field for Yi and other piano majors.
Yi reflected on the first time she tried one of the smaller keyboards: “I remember being really excited because my hands could actually reach and play all the right notes,” she said. Ever since, “I haven’t had a single injury, and I can practice as long as I want.”
For decades, few questioned the size of the conventional piano. If someone’s hand span was less than 8.5 inches — the distance considered ideal to comfortably play an octave — well, that’s just how it was.
Those who attempt “stretchy” passages either get used to omitting notes or risk tendon (腱) injury with repeated play. Leone is familiar with such challenges. Born into a family of jazz musicians, she instead favored classical music and pursued piano despite her small hand span and earned a doctorate in musical arts.
A few years after joining SMU’s music faculty in 1996, the decorated pianist read an article in Piano and Keyboard magazine about the smaller keyboards. As Leone would later write, the discovery would completely renew her life and career.
In 2000, she received a grant to retrofit a department Steinway to accommodate a smaller keyboard, and the benefits were immediate. In addition to relieving injury caused by overextended fingers, she said, it gave those with smaller spans the ability to play classic compositions taken for granted by larger-handed counterparts.
Smaller keyboards instill many with new confidence. It’s not their own limitations that have held them back, they realize; it’s the limitations of the instruments themselves. For those devoted to a life of making music, it’s as if a cloud has suddenly lifted.
1. What is the similarity between Eliana Yi and Carol Leone?| A．Their interest in jazz extended to classical music. |
| B．Short hand span used to restrict their music career. |
| C．They both joined SMU’s music faculty years ago. |
| D．Romantic-era composers’ music was easy for them. |
| A．To reduce the number of octaves. |
| B．To incorporate Bach into its music program. |
| C．To provide fair opportunities for piano majors. |
| D．To encourage pianists to spend more hours practicing. |
| A．Confident. | B．Frustrated. | C．Challenging. | D．Determined. |
| A．Who Qualifies as an Ideal Pianist? |
| B．Traditional or Innovative Piano? |
| C．Hard-working Pianists Pays off |
| D．The Story behind Retrofitted Pianos |
