1 . I was given a voice. That’s what people said about me I trained my voice, because it would be a shame to waste such a gift. I pictured this voice as a greenhouse plant and made sure it was provided with the right temperature, the right amount of water. I relieved its fears. I told it not to tremble. I nursed it, I trained it, and I watched it climb up inside my neck
My voice bloomed. People said I had grown into my voice. Invitations to perform flooded over us. All the best places wanted us. I was sought after, or rather my voice was. We went everywhere together and gave performances. Bouquets （花束）were thrown to it. Money was presented to it. Men fell on their knees before it. Applause flew around it.
Then my voice began to shrivel. People said my voice would bloom only for a certain term: finally it would drop off and gone with it would be all the fame and wealth. I have noticed it so far. Fear has entered me since my voice has used up most of my life. I’ve given it all my love. But my voice is still as greedy as ever. It wants more: more and more, more of everything it has had so far.
Now it’s evening: the bright lights come on, and excitement quickens in the streets. We sit in this hotel room. Soon it will be time for us to go out. We have to attend a grand occasion. The two of us chained together as always. I have to put on its favourite dress, its favourite necklace and wind a fur around it. Then I have to go out: shining like ice: my voice attached to my throat like an invisible vampire （吸血鬼）.
1. Why did the author compare her voice to a greenhouse plant?| A．To introduce her way to grow a plant. |
| B．To stress her hard efforts to train her voice. |
| C．To express her determination to show her gift. |
| D．To indicate her strong desire to improve her skill. |
| A．go up | B．die away |
| C．grow more pleasant | D．become less attractive |
| A．The author totally ruined her fame. |
| B．The author gradually lost her freedom. |
| C．The author eventually accepted her voice. |
| D．The author greatly enjoyed her performances. |
2 . Dental health: Brush with confidence
Children should be taught to brush their teeth regularly. But the suspicion remains among some People, dentists included, that even so, certain children are doomed to develop dental cavities. The hypothesis behind this fear is that some combinations of genes may give rise to the sorts of oral bacteria which are responsible for cavities. If true, that would be sad for the youngsters concerned.
But a study just published in Cell Host and Microbe, by Andres Gomez and Karen Nelson of the J. Craig Venter Institute, in San Diego, suggests it isn’t true.
The mouth is home to many species of microbes. Most are good. Some, though, are well known to secrete acidic waste products when fed sugar. This acidity weakens teeth, causing them to decay.
To try to find out whether a child’s genes play any role in encouraging such acid-secreting bugs, Dr Gomez and Dr Nelson set up an experiment with twins.
Their“volunteers”were 280 pairs of fraternal twins and 205 pairs of identical twins, all aged between five and 11, who had not taken antibiotics during the previous six months. The children were asked to stop brushing their teeth the evening and the morning before the crucial moment of data collection. This was when the researchers swabbed the children’s gingival sulci(the clefts between teeth and gums, in which bacteria collect)to find out what was there. The children also had their teeth scored by dentists as belonging to one of three categories: having no signs of current or previous dental cavities: having signs of current or previous cavities affecting the enamel(a tooth’s hard, outer layer); or having signs of cavities that penetrated the enamel and allected the underlying dentine as well.
Dr Gomez and Dr Nelson found that, though identical twins shared many groups of bacteria which were not shared by fraternal twins, none of these was a type responsible for cavities. Moreover, similarities in bacterial flora were greatest among five-to seven-year-olds, weaker among seven- to nine-year-olds and weakest among nine-to 11-year-olds. This suggests that any role genes do play in regulating the mouth’s ecology fades with time.
Far from supporting the idea that some children are fated to suffer from cavities no matter how well they brush their teeth, these results make it clear that the power to control the growth of the relevant bacteria is very much within reach of children and their parents. Brushing, however, may not be the only approach. Avoiding sugary foods is obviously de rigueur. It seems likely, though, that which other foods a child eats may help shape his oral ecosystem, too. This is an area of ongoing research. But, as in the intestines(肠道), so in the mouth, scientific medicine is at last coming to grips with the fact that the mixture of microbes present is both important and capable of manipulation, to the benefit of the host.
1. What does“hypothesis”refer to in paragraph 1?| A．Children’s failure to brush their teeth properly leads to tooth decay. |
| B．Some children are programmed to develop tooth decay. |
| C．Youngsters are suspicious of the effectiveness of tooth-brushing. |
| D．Some genes are more likely to lead to dental cavites. |
| A．whether genes have anything to do with dental decay |
| B．which group of twins are more likely to have decayed teeth |
| C．what kinds of foods tend to give rise to tooth decay |
| D．why the ecosystem of the intestines is similar to that of the mouth |
| A．Scientists are not yet sure how ecosystem of the mouth is formed. |
| B．The role genes play in controlling ecosystem of the mouth weakens with the time. |
| C．The children are classified into three groups according to the degrees of dental cavities. |
| D．Identical twins are not as genetically close to each other as fraternal twins. |
| A．The existence of multiple microbes benefits children’s oral ecosystem. |
| B．What a child eats enhances the healthfulness of a child’s oral ecosystem. |
| C．Cutting down on sugar intake is the most likely way to prevent tooth decay. |
| D．Parents are in no position to help their children maintain healthy oral ecosystem. |
1. What is the relationship between the speakers?
| A．Doctor and patient. | B．Mother and son. | C．Friends. |
| A．A month ago. | B．A week ago. | C．Three days ago. |
| A．He studied too hard. |
| B．He didn’t get enough exercise. |
| C．He was nervous about the midterm exams. |
The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China is moving to ban teachers from assigning homework on mobile apps or asking parents to grade students’ homework as part of an effort to save students’ eyesight. Through these efforts, the overall myopia (近视) rate among teenagers reduces by more than 0.5 percentage points per year from 2019 until 2023.
Provinces with a high incidence (发生率) of myopia are required to cut at least 1 percentage point per year. By 2030, the myopia rate for 6-year-old children should be below 3 percent, for primary school students, below 38 percent, for middle school students, below 60 percent, and for high school students, below 70 percent. Along with banning app-based homework assignments, the regulation would limit the use of electronic devices to 30 percent of total teaching time and instead encourage homework to be completed by hand on paper.
【写作内容】
1. 用约30个词概括上述图文内容；
2. 结合上述信息，简要分析导致学生近视问题的主要原因；
3. 请你从社会和个人两方面谈谈如何保护学生的视力（不少于两点）。
【写作要求】
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
3. 不必写标题。
【评分标准】
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
