1 . 读后续写

Emily White was born seventeen years ago with so many birth problems in her body. Some of her organs, bones and muscles were out of shape. No one expected her to survive. She did make it but with her strange body figure, everyone could recognize her, even from a distance.

In Emily White’s hometown, there was a yearly outdoor performance in the school auditorium (大礼堂). It had been performed for so many years and actually had become one of the most important events of the Christmas season for many of the town’s people.

Many people tried out each year for it, but so many were turned away. It can only include the most excellent people in the field.

Emily had a beautiful singing voice. Last year she went to Mrs. Owens — her music teacher to ask to join in the performance. Without letting her sing, Mrs. Owens took a look at Amy’s body and said, “Child, you just don’t fit. Everyone would stare at you and that would make you uncomfortable. It would make them uncomfortable, too.”

Without singing a single note, Emily was sent back through the door of the choral room. Hurt and upset, she decided never to try out again. But Mrs. Owens then retired.

This year, there came a new music teacher, Mr. Buttler. He heard about Emily and suggested that she have a try.

Emily didn’t want to be rejected again, so she hesitated a little about it. As Emily struggled, the door was pushed open and Mr. Buttler called, “Emily, you’re next.” Although kind of nervous, Emily did as Mr. Buttler told her to do. Mr. Buttler sat by the piano to keep Emily company. When Emily finished her testing performance, she thanked Mr. Buttler and knew the result would be posted on the door of the choral room the next day.

Emily couldn’t sleep that night. She was suffering from the feelings that she didn’t fit and the great need to be accepted. By the next morning, her stomach was even in pain because of stress.

注意：续写词数应为150左右

Paragraph 1: The next day, Emily nervously glanced at the list on the door of the choral room.

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Paragraph 2: Finally, the day of performance came.

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2 . Throughout history, music spread among people of different cultures. In today’s technological advanced society, however, people spread music online, sometimes without an artist’s permission. This can lead to many problems, and music companies are now cracking down on this practice. Sharing music online without permission is theft.

Sharing music online prevents recording companies from making money from their efforts. They say that sharing music online has resulted in a huge drop in profits and sales over the past 10 years. People who find music for free online are not paying for CDs or every MP3 downloaded. To truly understand the influence of music piracy (盗版行为) on creators, one must understand how many people are involved in the recording process. For the sale of each album, profits must be shared between musicians, sound engineers, music producers, managers, advertisers,and the company selling the product. Many people believe sharing music only affects the recording artist, but the reality is that sharing hurts business for all companies involved.

There are many people who don’t see the harm in sharing music online and even think they have the right to do it.One online blogger states that he originally paid for an entire CD and that he should be able to do with the material whatever he wants. While he may have legally paid for the music, he does not have the right to provide permission,which means people like the blogger are thieves.

Although we don’t spread today’s music the same way we did before, there’s no doubt that people around the world love to share music. However, internet piracy would prevent musicians from continuing producing albums for fear of theft. Therefore, if people want to continue listening to their favorite artists, they need to buy their music so that artists will make enough profit to continue their music careers.

1. The underlined phrase “cracking down on” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ___________.

A．bringing up carefully	B．speaking highly of
C．dealing seriously with	D．destroying completely

2. What can we infer from the text?

A．Artists are taking action to protect their right.

B．Sharing music files online affects a lot of people.

C．Online music sharing increases sales of music CD.

D．A person who bought a CD has the right to share it online.

3. How is the text organized?

A．Topic-Argument-Explanation.

B．Opinion-Discussion-Description.

C．Main idea-Comparison-Supporting statements.

D．Introduction-Supporting statements-Conclusion.

3 . It's Alarming: What Wakes You Up Each Morning?

How do you wake up in the morning? If you set an alarm on your phone or clock that sounds like this: beep beep beep?     1     Sleep inertia is another term for grogginess(昏睡), which means a person has a heavy feeling when waking up, and has trouble getting moving again after sleeping,

    2     A recent study says yes. The answer is music. Researchers say alarms that have a melody—like the beginning of this song—can help people feel fresher in the morning.

The study, carried out by researchers in Australia, involved 50 people. The study subjects answered questions about the alarm sound they like to wake up to, how they feel about that sound and how they feel when they wake up.     3     However, it is early days and more work is needed to fully know the answer.

So, what makes musical alarms better for waking up? The researchers think the music may be more successful in reducing grogginess because it has several tones, compared to the single tone of a "beeping" alarm.     4     And is there a kind of music that is best to wake up to? There may be     5     However, no matter how you wake up, experts say, the amount of sleep you get also matters a lot.

A．Can musical alarms work wonders？

B．So, is there a better way to do the trick？

C．This can help you fall asleep more quickly and easily.

D．Alarm sounds that are tune full and easy to hum or sing along with may be good choices.

E．The researchers found that people who wake up to musical alarms reported feeling more awake and alert.

F．The changes over time between the music tones may help increase a person's attention when waking from sleep.

G．That hard, unpleasant sound may be making it harder to shake off the sleepy feeling in the morning known as grogginess.

4 . To many of us, art is obviously a kind of human expression of creativity. But in recent years, you may have read news about artificial intelligence (AI) creating its own art, such as painting or writing poems. Some people worry that AI might someday replace artists.

    1    Many artists today are turning AI into a useful tool. Instead of replacing artists, AI is bringing artists more possibilities.

A piece of music created by AI recently attracted attention. AI was used to turn the novel virus into a piece of nearly two-hour long music based on its protein structure. The project was led by Markus Buehler, an American musician and MIT professor of engineering. He assigned (指定) a unique note to each amino acid (氨基酸) in the protein.    2    

Listeners found the project to be “mind-blowing”. “It allows me to see the virus from a new angle,” said one listener.    3    As The Verge wrote, “AI helps artists play around in unpredictable ways, creating things beyond what they have ever thought was possible before.”

    4    For example, in the comic and animation industries, there are now AI tools that can automatically (自动地) color in black-and-white line drawings. Although the results can be unpredictable and require a little cleanup, it “could give artists room to experiment, by cutting down the time it takes to color each frame (画面)”, said Joao Do Lago, animator of Netflix’s Castlevania.

As Peter Ward wrote for The Culture Trip, art of every kind has always been influenced by technological breakthroughs.    5    

A．The AI then translated these notes into music.

B．AI has become an important part of our everyday life.

C．But this worry seems to be unnecessary, at least for now.

D．AI can become a useful tool to bring change to the art world.

E．Besides the music industry, AI has entered the world of poetry as well.

F．This surprising marriage between science and art could not be achieved without AI.

G．Apart from co-creating imaginative works, AI can also help artists avoid repeating tasks.

5 . Probably no other musical instrument is as popular as the guitar. Musicians use the guitar for almost every kind of music. Country and western music would not be the same without a guitar. The traditional Spanish folk music called Flamenco could not exist without a guitar. The sound of American blues music would not be the same without the sad cry of the guitar. And rock and roll music would almost be impossible without this instrument.

Some music experts say an instrument very much like a guitar was played in Egypt more than one thousand years ago. Some other experts say that the ancestor of the modern guitar was brought to Spain from Persia sometime in the twelfth century. The guitar continued to develop in Spain. In the 1700s, it became similar to the instrument we know today.

Many famous musicians played the instrument. The famous Italian violinist Niccolo Paganinni played and wrote music for the guitar in the early 1800s. Franz Schubert used the guitar to write some of his famous works. One kind of music for the guitar developed in the southern area of Spain called Adalusia. It will always be strongly linked with the Spanish guitar. It is called Flamenco.

In the 1930s, Les Paul began experimenting with ways to make an electric guitar. He invented the solid body electric guitar in 1946. The guitar has always been important to blues music. With the electric guitar, Les Paul helped make modern blues music possible. There have been many great blues guitarists. Yet, music experts say all blues guitar players are measured against one man and his famous guitar. That man is B. B. King. Every blues fan knows that years ago B. B. King named his guitar Lucille. Here B. B. King plays Lucille on his famous recording of “The Thrill Is Gone”. Lucille, B. B. King's large, beautiful black guitar, is important to American music. Visitors can see King's very first guitar at the Rock and Soul Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The museum is the only permanent exhibit organized by the Smithsonian Institution outside Washington, D. C. , and New York City.

1. Where did the modern guitar finally come into being?

A．Spain.	B．Egypt.
C．Persia.	D．Italy.

2. What does the last paragraph mainly tell us?

A．The musician B. B. King named his guitar Lucille.

B．The Rock and Soul Museum first opened in Memphis.

C．The electric guitar promoted the development of the blues.

D．The exhibit was first organized by the Smithsonian Institution.

3. What would be the best title for this passage?

A．Traditional Folk Music	B．Guitar and Music
C．Violinist and Blues	D．Flamenco and Guitar

6 . 阅读下面材料,在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式

What would life be like without music? Songs fill our lives, affecting our emotions, bringing back     1    (memory)and sometimes making us dance. There is a song for everyone and for every occasion, but it seems that it's sad music that moves us most.

Sad music certainly does its job in making us    2    (depress), emotional, and causing us to cry-it's something we might listen to after    3    break-up. For example, a research conducted by Durham University has suggested that    4     (listen)to sad music can trigger pain and sadness,     5    it can also provide comfort and even     6    (enjoy). A high number of people they surveyed    7    (cheer)up by listening to supposedly sad songs. Though the feeling may not be    8    (exact) the same as happiness, it may be the ability to cope with the sadness     9    gives the feeling of comfort.

So, reacting     10    sad music on the radio may have nothing to do with the sorrowful sound of a string quartet or a singer who's got the blues, but rather a natural chemical reaction taking place in our bodies.

7 . Let's face it — we all have some form of stress. Whether it's because of work, school reports    1    family, we could all use a break now and then. Yet in the rush of modern life, lots of us can't find time to just drop everything and take it easy.

Well, what if someone told you that by just    2    (play) music from classical composers like Mozart, Strauss, or Vivaldi, you might find your job a lot    3    (easy)? This has actually been found    4    (be)true.

Listening to classical music    5    (prove) to be helpful to learning and mind relaxation.

Various    6    (study) of children have shown that those who receive modern education often have improved their grades. Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect, has devoted    7    (he) to studying the effects of music     8    the mind and body. He tells students that classical music playing in the background can help them concentrate for longer periods of time and memorize material more easily. He feels that Mozart's music has a balance that makes it    9    (especial) useful.

So the next time you feel yourself tired with work, or if you're just finding it difficult to concentrate, remember    10    power of music.

8 . We spend a great amount of time listening to music. Most college students listen to music at least three or four times a week, and more than 50 percent of them go to at least one concert per year.

According to new research, we may be born liking music, because human beings are born to find certain combinations of sounds attractive. For example, young children can recognize a familiar song even when its key is changed. Similarly, they respond with more emotions to their mothers' singing than to their mothers' speech. Careful analysis of mothers' child-directed songs indicates that each mother's songs remain stable from one “performance” to the next, and this may encourage children's engagement with the songs.

Research with adults suggests that music catches our attention by activating (激活) brain pathways that are most suited to processing music than to processing other kinds of sound. Specifically, music appreciation relies on the auditory cortex (听觉皮层) on the right side of the brain, which is specialized to process sound that characterizes music — in contrast to the left auditory cortex, which processes the stop-and-start bursts of sound that characterize speech.

Although some psychologists remain skeptical about whether music may have powerful effects on our thinking, a number of studies have shown that listening to music can increase people's spatial reasoning abilities. Furthermore, it is clear that music can greatly influence our emotions. Personally significant music activates areas of the brain associated with pleasure and reward, the same areas that are activated by good food.

Researchers do not agree about how humans' abilities to process and enjoy music have come into being. Anyway, the next time you enjoy listening to a piece of music, remember that the most complex pieces of audio equipment are the ones between your headphones.

1. Which of the following might belong to the “certain combinations of sounds” in paragraph 2?

A．A debate	B．A song
C．A dialogue	D．A quarrel

2. It can be learned from paragraph 4 that ________.

A．no doubt music can increase people's thinking ability

B．music simply gives people positive emotions

C．music has a great influence on human beings

D．only music can give people pure pleasure and reward

3. According to the passage, the most complex pieces of audio equipment lie ________.

A．at a college	B．in a brain
C．in the concert	D．in the headphone

9 . Rock music consists of (包括) many different styles. Even though there is a common spirit among all music groups, they make very different music.     1     At that time the Beatles entered the world of music from Liverpool.

After they were given an invitation to appear live on BBC, the Beatles quickly became famous in Britain with nationwide tours. By mid-1963, the Beatles had been extremely popular in England     2     They held large concerts and performed (表演) at clubs. They became the hottest thing on the pop music scene in England.

    3     They were not sure how the Americans would react to (反应) the new type of music. Beatlemania hit New York on February 7, 1964. Hundreds of fans jammed the airport to welcome them     4     The concert was broadcast (广播) live and attracted the largest one night audience in the history of television up to that time.Their victory in America was still remembered as a main turning point in the history of rock and roll. Thanks to the Beatles, a lot of opportunities were opened up to new faces on the market.     5    

A．They decided on a tour to the United States in 1964.

B．Even their hairstyles became major fashion at that time.

C．Rock music developed in the 1950s and the early 1960s.

D．However, their songs changed the lives of generations to come.

E．Many rock bands were able to follow in the footsteps of the Beatles.

F．They appeared in the films A Hard Day's Night (1964)and Help! (1965).

G．They performed their first concert in America at CBS television's 53rd street studio.

10 . In the middle of a hot July afternoon, I became a thief of some sort — a thief of music.

For the first time, I created an original piano arrangement of one of my favorite songs. Using only my ears and iPad, I transformed a mix of sounds and melodies into the tones of a single instrument; I created complex harmonies (和声) and voices into something I could perform with only two hands. No help, no guide — I did it on my own.

I've been a pianist since my hands grew big enough to touch the piano. With my father as a musician, I was all but born on the piano bench. For many years, my musical identity was defined by the notes that others had written in the past centuries: elegant lines of neatly printed notes stamped across the sheet music became the script I had to perform. I valued classical music — adored it — but I felt such performances were shallow. I had nothing of my own to contribute to the masterful compositions of Bach or Rachmaninov.

This was why, when I put the finishing touches to my piano version of a modem song, my pride was glorious: this arrangement was mine. What I'd done seemed magical: an ability to take what had already existed — to "steal" a song from my favorite band — and to change it into something different all on my own. I was a thief but I was also an artist.

In music, as in other aspects of life, I believe that true originality rarely exists. Almost everything has been done before, in one form or another. The most passionate romance novel may be a slightly changed version of a play written by Shakespeare, which in turn was borrowed from the writers of Ancient Greece: the same themes, different characters, and different circumstances. But the novel no less deserves praise just because its uniqueness is compromised.

The gift of creativity is just like the ability to do what I did on the piano: to find out something beautiful, to analyze and change it and lose yourself in the mystery of its composition, and then to make it new. Such an act is not copying; it is finding inspiration and having the strength and the innovation to use it as fuel for your own masterpiece.

1. Why did the author create the piano arrangement?

A．Because he was not satisfied with the old one.

B．Because he wanted to create music of his own.

C．Because he was tired of his father's music-teaching method.

D．Because he wanted to show respect for Bach and Rachmaninov.

2. By mentioning Shakespeare, the author wants to tell us______.

A．there is no true creativity in music.

B．Shakespeare9s plays are totally original.

C．many of Shakespeare,s plays deserve no praise.

D．originality is connected with what has already existed.

3. We can conclude from the passage that______.

A．creativity is to find something beautiful.

B．adaptation has nothing to do with creativity.

C．a masterpiece can be a changed version of an existed work.

D．common people don't have the ability to create something new.