1 . Observing the natural world is a wonderful way of learning more about ourselves. Elisabeth Bailey found
You may not know a woodland snail’s shell adds layers as it ages, and that it has 2,462 teeth. Bailey knew well about such
At the age of 34, Bailey suffered a serious illness which
“It had evolved its long
On the days Bailey was unable to engage in the normal human world, she was
And it was during this year of slowing down and
| A．comfort | B．trust | C．love | D．fault |
| A．beneficial | B．decisive | C．minute | D．regular |
| A．previous | B．political | C．cruel | D．constant |
| A．replaced | B．trapped | C．persuaded | D．arrested |
| A．applaud | B．create | C．move | D．calculate |
| A．join | B．pass | C．find | D．measure |
| A．review | B．defense | C．delivery | D．survival |
| A．patience | B．strength | C．head | D．tooth |
| A．sunk | B．struck | C．released | D．cheated |
| A．sufficient | B．alien | C．silent | D．available |
| A．curiosity | B．courage | C．ability | D．tendency |
| A．migrating | B．noticing | C．mixing | D．exposing |
| A．removed | B．rescued | C．driven | D．freed |
| A．fade away | B．break down | C．fit in | D．come to |
| A．otherwise | B．somehow | C．instead | D．indeed |
Almost all the people like travelling. For some people, travelling is a chance to relax and escape
Of course, there are people who are always
As for me. I enjoy watching all-round views from some altitudes. I enjoy watching them in my hometown and as soon as I am in some new city. I start
From such places it’s so exciting
I’d like to share with you a funny incident that occurred almost 4 years ago.
I was an 8th grader at high school. One day, the teacher gave us a group assignment and we went to some libraries after class to collect data. In the evening, I found that my group members were complaining that they were hungry and needed to have some food.
Together we entered a restaurant nearby. When the waiter approached our table, one of my classmates made an order directly without even looking at the menu. And after we were done with our food, a classmate asked the group leader to pay the bill. The group leader was surprised as he had not offered the meal and said that he did not have the money to pay the bill. I asked the waiter to bring the bill and we were shocked to see the amount. It was much more than we had expected. Though we were a bit worried, we started laughing and enjoying the whole thing. At this moment, a group member suggested we collect all of our money to pay the bill. We searched our wallets, pockets and bags for money. There were so many coins there that we had to count 2-3 times. But unfortunately, the total amount was still not enough to pay the bill.
As the scene unfolded, the atmosphere shifted from casual laughter to a shared sense of responsibility. Realizing the gravity of the situation, I stepped up and decided to explain our situation to the manager, hoping for some understanding or perhaps a way to work out a payment plan. To our relief, the manager kindly listened to our story. Seeing our genuine efforts to resolve the issue, he agreed to let us pay what we had collected and arrange for the rest to be settled later.
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We left the restaurant with empty wallets but light hearts.
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This incident served as a reminder for better teamwork in the future.
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A lady named Ela lived in a small, pretty town surrounded by gentle hills and big. green forests. Her favorite place in the whole world was her kitchen. It was like her special art studio, but for making delicious food. Ella loved cooking, especially for her mom, who really enjoyed old-fashioned, tasty dishes. Every night, they would sit down together and enjoy the tasty food that Ella made with lots of care and love.
Ella’s mother always said, “Cooking is not just about feeding my body; it is about feeding my soul. ” Ella kept these words close to her heart, and cooking became a spiritual bond between her mother and her. They shared joyful times, with Ella carefully measuring each cooking material and making her mom’s favorite while her mom told stories of her own childhood kitchen adventures. On cold evenings, they would laugh together as they added spices to a hearty stew, the steam making the kitchen windows foggy and turning it into a warm, comfortable place.
However, this bond was broken when her mother passed away. The kitchen, once filled with warmth, the smell of spices and the sound of laughter, turned into a place that just reminded Ella of her mom and made her very sad. She avoided the recipe books, as they brought back memories of their cooking sessions- like the time they accidentally used salt instead of sugar in cookies, but ended up laughing it off and making it once again together. With her mom gone, the joy of cooking faded, leaving Ella with a heart heavy with loss.
Months turned into years, and Ella’s interest in cooking faded into a distant memory. But life had other plans for her. One day, Ella came across a volunteer group that attended to seniors in her community. Moved by their dedication, she decided to join them.
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As Ella spent more time with the seniors, she noticed their longing for home-cooked meals.
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Ella finally found herself on the path to recovery and rediscovery.
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5 . Ten years ago, the professors Brian Lucas and Loran Nordgren encountered a contradiction. On the one hand, we recognize that other people are more likely to make creative breakthroughs when they persevere. On the other hand. when we feel stuck on a problem, most of us fail to sec how successful we’ll be if we just keep trying. We tend to believe that our creativity drops over time — that if our best ideas don’t come to us immediately, they won’t come at all.
Lucas and Nordgren call this misunderstanding the “creative cliff illusion”, which refers to the false belief that our creativity sharply declines after an initial period of effort, leading us to underestimate our ability to generate new and innovative ideas with continued perseverance. In one experiment, they asked participants to spend 10 minutes generating “as many original ideas for things to eat and drink at a Thanksgiving dinner as you can. ” Afterward, participants were asked to guess how many ideas they would come up with during a second 10-minute period. Most expected to generate far fewer ideas the second time around, but in fact they produced just as many during that second period — 66 percent more than they had guessed. And those were rated by other people as more creative than the initial ideas.
Though we tend to think our ability to come up with ideas is easily consumed, we actually get more creative the longer we focus on a problem or task. One major reason for this is known as the “serial-order effect”. Each next creative idea we have is likely to be better than the one that came before.
The serial-order effect isn’t always easy to see. Most of us have adopted the belief that creativity should feel easy, or “fluent”. And so we associate mental difficulty with pointlessness. But working through bad ideas is a necessary step in the creative process. The first solutions that come to mind tend to be either preexisting ideas or popular wisdom. These are the paths of least resistance. Though avoiding them requires some work, it’s the surest way to find original ideas that aren’t immediately manifest.
The serial-order effect applies to tasks that last minutes or days, but creativity also improves across years, decades, and even careers. The life’s work of most successful entrepreneurs proves it.
1. What does the contradiction mainly tell us about?| A．Two professors’ wonder. | B．The best ideas for failures. |
| C．People’s mental tendency. | D．Immediate solutions to creativity. |
| A．Humble. | B．Surprised. | C．Hopeful. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．Obvious. | B．Effective. | C．Attractive. | D．Acceptable. |
| A．People can be more creative with age. |
| B．Creativity comes from creative approaches. |
| C．Creativity actually increases with continued effort. |
| D．People can avoid misunderstandings about creativity. |
6 . When I started Social-Engineer, I just left a company that was amazing. It was like a family. The pain of leaving was real for me and like all family separation, it wasn’t 100% smooth. I was heartbroken to leave but wanted to take every lesson I learned to my new company. I was determined to also take all the good memories with me. Yes, there were mistakes from both sides of the fence but instead of focusing on those, I went away remembering all the great times, life lessons and growth I had gifted to me.
I figured I would grow my company by being a nice man and working hard, and never demanding more from my people than I was willing to give, believing this approach would earn respect and effort in return. I would say things to myself like, “Well, I did this, so they should do that.” Or “I am this way, so they should be that way.”
And to be honest, it felt real. It felt like it was an honest evaluation.
But... But... But...
I started to have people problems. I am a very strong, direct communicator and although in many ways that is a strength, it can be a weakness in other ways. I often hurt people’s feelings. Even though I was very self-aware of this, I still messed up. Now this is odd to admit out loud for a company that basically focuses on helping dozens of companies make huge changes.
I went to see a psychologist. Natasha actively listened to all I said and then every now and then presented a thought as a question or a mild statement. She wanted to challenge me to change, challenge me to expand my thoughts. I was in my session with Natasha and I was saying things like this:
“I gave this person tens of thousands of dollars in a raise in one year, they should be more appreciative.”
“I have a great salary, benefits and support package, this person should have been more thankful.”
Natasha stopped me and said, “Well, you just SHOULD all over yourself, didn’t you? Did you pay for devotion? Did you pay for honor? Did you pay for appreciation?”
The sad answer was NO.
“You want to see the change that you so desire — then be the change,” Natasha said. She then mentioned Bruce Lee, who said “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle... Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
I know what I should do. Will you join me?
1. Why was the author confident about his company management?| A．He believed he was gifted for it. |
| B．His employees were well qualified. |
| C．He had lessons and work principles. |
| D．His previous mistakes had been removed. |
| A．The rigid rules. | B．The lack of vision. |
| C．The company’s focus. | D．The author’s social skill. |
| A．The author fell into a thinking trap. |
| B．The employees expected too much. |
| C．The author was not really committed. |
| D．The employees were victims of management. |
| A．Read Bruce Lee. | B．Learn to change. |
| C．Take more duties. | D．Desire less for more. |
A punctual person is in the habit of doing things at proper time in a
Unpunctuality is very harmful. Friends sometimes grow cold to wards each other, or even become
There is a proverb which says, “There is a time
8 . There is always a lot of talk about what is fair, and what is not.
We definitely have no choice about how we come into this world. We have little choice early in life. But as we grow older, choices exist around. I have long believed that while we have no control over the beginning of our life, the majority of us have the ability to influence the outcomes we attain. Fairness is a state of mind, and most often, an unhealthy state of mind. Our state in life cannot, or at least should not, be blamed on our parents, our teachers, or our society.
I agree that challenges exist. I agree that many have an uphill battle due to the challenges they face.
| A．Most people tend to insist that life should be fair. |
| B．There is no absolute fairness in life, but it’s relatively fair. |
| C．Life is full of examples of people who complain about life being unfair. |
| D．In fact, it’s largely based on the choices we make, and the attitudes we adopt. |
| E．But I disagree with the attempt to use fairness to solve all problems in the world. |
| F．Stories like this are all around us-they are not miracles, nor are they the rare exception. |
| G．It doesn’t matter whether we are born with a silver spoon, plastic spoon, or no spoon at all. |
9 . This wasn’t the way I wanted to see Rome. Sure, it felt
I was supposed to go to Rome with my mom back in 2012. However, life had different
My mom spent the final months of her life
I spent two weeks doing all the things we had wanted to do. Maybe she wasn’t physically there, but I
After my trip to Rome, I
| A．surprising | B．strange | C．embarrassing | D．pleasant |
| A．styles | B．plans | C．solutions | D．excuses |
| A．research | B．training | C．treatment | D．waiting |
| A．picked up | B．held back | C．heard | D．forced |
| A．examining | B．fighting | C．studying | D．controlling |
| A．battle | B．strategy | C．cause | D．contest |
| A．missed | B．arranged | C．sponsored | D．rejected |
| A．strangely | B．fortunately | C．honestly | D．interestingly |
| A．guide | B．budget | C．destination | D．choice |
| A．regretted | B．doubted | C．sensed | D．remembered |
| A．warned | B．promised | C．informed | D．reminded |
| A．memories | B．efforts | C．decisions | D．changes |
| A．interrupt | B．leave | C．understand | D．desert |
| A．positive | B．practical | C．flexible | D．normal |
| A．hardly | B．probably | C．partly | D．eventually |
My dad worked in construction. His day started early and ended late. All he wanted to do was crash on the couch and relax when he got home. For the most part that was what he did. No one complained; we were just happy when he was home.
But one hot and muggy summer, when my parents’ nineteenth anniversary was coming up, they made plans to go out, just the two of them. The big day finally arrived and Dad got home at seven. Mom had fed me early. She was dressed in her finest and wearing her favorite pair of high heels when he came in. He came through the kitchen and headed for the family room. It was obvious he was hot and tired.
“Honey, I just need a thirty-minute nap and then we will go out to eat,” he said as he sat down on the couch. Mom was already on her way over to the couch to give him a fresh cup of hot coffee. She bent over and kissed him on the head and said, “I’ll be ready whenever you are.”
I knew how important this evening was to my mother, but before long Dad was fast asleep. Then I watched my mother do the strangest thing. She reached into the refrigerator and took out eggs and bacon. Soon she had a batch of biscuits baking in the oven.
Before my eyes she piled a plate full of his favorite foods. As she set another fresh cup of coffee on the end table she bent down and kissed him while whispering in his ear. “It’s time to wake up.”
He sat up on the edge of the couch. As he looked up he found my mom standing in front of him with his dinner. “Honey, I promised you I would take you out to dinner and I meant it.” he said sincerely.
Mom sat down beside him on the couch as he took the plate of food. She said, “I know you would, but I also know you’ve had a hard day and you’re tired. What’s important is that we are together. We can go out any time for dinner.”
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。
My dad sat there, holding the plate of dinner prepared by my mom.
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Suddenly, the doorbell rang and I knew my special package for them came.
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