1 . There are over one million superstitions, and most people believe at least one or two of them. Many people are superstitious about numbers. They think that there are lucky numbers and unlucky numbers. The number 13 is often considered unlucky. In some parts of the world, buildings have no 13th floor and streets have no houses with the number 13.In Japan “4” is considered unlucky because in Japanese the word “four” is pronounced the same as the word “death”. The Japanese never give gifts of four knives, four napkins, or four of anything.

What are the lucky numbers? Seven is a lucky number in many places, and “8” is considered a lucky number in Japan and China. In China, businesses often open on August 8, and many couples register to get married at eight past eight on August 8. Superstitions about numbers are so widespread that some people called numerologists make a living by giving advice about numbers. In 1937, when the Toyoda Family of Japan wanted to form a car company, they asked a numerologist if “Toyoda” would be a good name for the company. The numerologist said it would not be. He explained that “Toyota” would be a better name for the company. The family took his advice. As a result, millions of people drive “Toyotas” and not “Toyodas.”

There are many other kinds of superstitions. There are superstitions about eating, sleeping, sneezing and itching. There are superstitions about animals and holidays and horseshoes.

There are even superstitions about superstitions. Those superstitions tell people how to reverse bad luck. When the Japanese bump (撞) heads, they immediately bump heads again.

According to a Japanese superstition, the first bump means their parents will die, but the second bump “erases” the first bump. To reverse bad luck in general, people turn around three times, turn their pocket inside out, or put their hats on backwards.

1. It can be inferred that superstition about numbers are ________.

A．popular all over the world

B．accepted by many people in the world

C．valuable to businessmen

D．dangerous to common people

2. The underlined word “reverse” in the last paragraph means ________.

A．cause to go in the opposite direction

B．bump heads again

C．prevent their parents from dying

D．make sth. worse

3. If we see a Japanese bumps his head once again, we know that he is ________.

A．mad

B．angry

C．superstitious

D．foolish

4. What’s the writer’s purpose in writing this passage?

A．To persuade us to believe superstitions.

B．To warn us not to believe superstitions.

C．To show us some facts about superstitions.

D．To show us the magic power of superstitions.

2 . An NPC deputy (人大代表) during this year’s two sessions suggested dividing the winter and summer vacations into four shorter vacations. Though it seems helpful, the proposal is out of the realities.

Firstly, the deputy believed that shorter vacations could alleviate (缓解) parents’ burden of caring for their children at home and offer families more opportunities to travel together. However, the general consensus (共识) is that most parents are often so busy trying to make enough money to provide for their children’s education and household costs that they don’t even have enough time to keep their kids company, let alone to be able to take their kids on vacation.

Secondly, each of the breaks will only last for about three weeks. Even though this is generally a long enough time for students to go to tutoring centers (培训机构) if their parents pay extra attention to their children’s studies, they may end up finding themselves continuously having to shift between a busy school term and a more relaxed period of time off. While this may help to prevent children from playing with their mobile phones or video games, is it really necessary to create new term system (体系) to do so? As the saying goes, “Penny wise and pound foolish.”

Moreover, as some netizens have mentioned, the main purpose of winter and summer vacations is to give students more time to celebrate the Spring Festival and to escape the summer heat. Not only do longer vacations spare many students the efforts of travelling from home to school, but they also offer chances for them to do things with long-lasting positive effects, such as volunteering in the community or joining in overseas exchanges.

In a word, there is still a long way to go to improve the vacation system before a better option turns up. So what we students need to do for now is just make the best of our vacation time and prepare ourselves for the future terms.

1. Why did the deputy make the new proposal?

A．To pay more attention to children’s learning.

B．To encourage children to relax themselves.

C．To increase parents-children caring and love.

D．To greatly reduce children’s learning burden.

2. If kids have shorter vacations, they may ________.

A．have more time to learn their school subjects

B．find their study and rest both poorly affected

C．feel more relaxed and will do better in new terms

D．not be interested in phones or computer games

3. Which “spare” of the following sentences shares the same meaning with the underlined “spare” (para 4)?

A．I tried to spare Tom the trouble of coming late for school.

B．Whenever our guests come, we have some free rooms to spare.

C．I have decided that I will spare no effort to improve my English.

D．It’s good and wonderful of you to spare time to come to see me.

4. The author thinks the proposal is ________.

A．valuable

B．charming

C．unpractical

D．challenging

3 . 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。

Nowadays, it is getting harder and harder to live    1    GPS devices (设备).Everyone can use GPS devices    2    (find) their way around if they get lost.That is     3    these systems are getting so popular.You can drive in any city anywhere in the world and never get lost.You do not even have to read street    4     (sign), because the GPS will tell you where to turn and in which    5     (direct).If you have one of these systems in your car, you will be able to track it when it     6     (steal).You can protect    7     (you) by getting your cars    8     (equip) with a GPS system.Equipping phones with    9    GPS system is also great and useful.You can track people by the GPS in their phone.

    10     (have) a GPS system will save you lots of time.If you don't have any GPS devices yet, then you will want to hurry to the shop and get one today.It will change your life forever.

4 . 阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。

Human beings are smart. However, it seems that people are gradually losing their smartness as smartphones become more and more important assistants in their lives, reported news website Record Japan on Oct. 22. As we rely too much on technology instead of our brains, many people have lost three basic abilities, said the website.

The first skill many people have lost is remembering phone numbers. Because phone numbers are stored in smart phone contacts, there's no need to dial a number or look at it again.

And some people may also have lost their sense of direction because navigation apps can guide people anywhere they want to go. These apps can even find shortest routes for you and avoid traffic jams. But the worst lost skills may be social ones, meaning that some people are becoming socially inept(无能的）. People often bury themselves in their smart phones. As we're too addicted to what's happening in the virtual world, some of us have lost conversational skills and sometimes can't even tell whether a person is happy or not.

In August, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied 51 students aged 11 and 12 who had over five hours' screen time every day. Their task was to tell the emotions of 48 pictures of faces that were happy, sad, angry or scared. The children made an average of 14.02 mistakes at the beginning. But after a five-day camp without electronic (电子的) products, they made only 9.41 mistakes on average. “If you’re not practicing face-to-face communication, you could be losing important social skills,” concluded professor Yalda Uhls from the research.

Luckily, people still have a chance to get these abilities back. You should try to keep your parents' numbers in mind for emergencies. You should also pay more attention to street signs and stores, which will help you to draw a mind map and stop you from getting lost. And the easiest solution to social skill loss is to take a break from electronic devices because we are social creatures. We need device-free time.

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5 . In the United States, 30 percent of the people have a “weight problem”. To many people the cause is obvious (明显的): they eat too much. But scientific evidence (证据) does little to support this idea. Going back to America of 1910, we find that people were thinner than today, yet they ate more food. In those days people worked harder physically, walked more, used machines much less, and didn’t watch television.

Several modern studies, moreover, have shown that fatter people don’t eat more on average than thinner people. A 1979 study of 3,545 London office workers showed that fat people eat less than slim (苗条的) people.

Studies also show that slim people are more active than fat people. A study by a research group at Stanford University found the following interesting facts:

The more the man ran, the greater loss of the body fat.

The more they ran, the greater increase in food intake.

Thus, those who ran the most ate the most, yet lost the greatest amount of body fat.

1. Nowadays many Americans have the problem that ______.

A．they are too slim	B．they work too hard
C．they are too fat	D．they lose too much body fat

2. According to the passage, how many people in 900 Americans have a “weight problem”?

A．150.

B．300.

C．600.

D．270.

3. The Americans in 1910 ________.

A．ate more food and had more physical activities	B．ate less food but had more physical activities
C．ate less food and had less physical activities	D．had more problems

6 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

More than twenty American states ban smoking in public.     1     study has proved that smoke-free laws can reduce a major effect of tobacco—heart disease.The study     2     (take) place in Pueblo, Colorado several years ago. In some states, there were 396 heart attack     3     (patient) in the year before the ban in hospitals.

However,18 months     4     the ban, the number was 237. Smoking in enclosed (封闭的) places is very     5     (harm) to non-smoke. Adults may think they are     6     (actual) protecting their children from second-hand smoke when they smoke outside their homes, or when the children are not there. However, researchers     7     (warn) of what they call “third-hand smoke” so far. When you smoke they say, dangerous matter from tobacco smoke gets into     8     (you) hair and clothing. Then, when you touch a baby, the baby comes into contact with that poisonous matter. The researchers also found that people,     9     agreed that smoke was bad for children’s health, were more likely to have restriction on     10     (smoke) in their homes than others.

7 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入 1 个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Without proper    1    (plan),   tourism   can   lead   to   many   problems. For example,   too   many tourists can crowd public places    2    are also enjoyed by   the   inhabitants(居民)   of   a   country.   If   tourism   creates   too   much   traffic,   the inhabitants will become    3    (annoy)   and   unhappy.   They   will   begin to dislike tourists    4    treat them    5    (polite). As a result, they forget how much tourism can help the country’s economy and start harboring negative feelings towards the industry.     6     is important to think about the people of a destination country and    7    tourism affects them. Tourism should help a     country keep the customs and beauty that attracts tourists. Tourism should also advance the wealth and     8     (happy) of local inhabitants.

Too much tourism can be     9    problem. If tourism grows    10    quickly, people must leave other jobs to work in the tourism industry. This means that other parts of the country’s economy can suffer.

8 . The continuous presentation of frightening stories about global warming in the popular media makes us unnecessarily frightened. Even worse, it ________ our kids.

Al Gore famously ________ how a sea-level rise of 20 feet would almost completely flood Florida, New York, Holland, and Shanghai, even though the United Nations says that such a thing will not even happen, ________ that sea levels will rise 20 times less than that.

When ________ with these exaggerations, some of us say that they are for a good cause, and surely there is no harm done if the result is that we focus even more on handling climate change.

This ________ is astonishingly wrong. Such exaggerations do plenty of harm. Worrying excessively about global warming means that we worry less about other things, where we could do so much more good. We focus, ________, on global warming's impact on malaria (疟疾)----which will put slightly more people at ________in 100 years - instead of dealing with the half a billion people ________ from malaria today with prevention and treatment policies that are much cheaper and dramatically more effective than carbon reduction would be.

Exaggeration also wears out the public's ________ to cope with global warming. If the planet is certain to be destroyed owing to global warming, people wonder, why do anything? A record 54% of American voters now believe the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. A ________ of people now believe – incorrectly – that global warming is not even caused by humans.

But the ________ cost of exaggeration, I believe, is the unnecessary alarm that it causes – particularly among children. An article in The Washington Post cited nine-year-old Alyssa, who cries about the possibility of mass animal ________ from global warming.

The newspaper also reported that parents are ________ effective outlets for their eight-year-olds' concern with dying polar bears. They might be better off educating them and letting them know that, ________ to common belief, the global polar bear population has doubled over the past half- century, to about 22,000. ________ the possible disappearing of summer Arctic ice, polar bears will not become extinct.

1.

A．exhausts

B．depresses

C．terrifies

D．exploits

2.

A．dismissed

B．demonstrated

C．deposited

D．described

3.

A．measuring

B．justifying

C．estimating

D．advocating

4.

A．faced

B．identified

C．equipped

D．entitled

5.

A．announcement

B．argument

C．interaction

D．dialogue

6.

A．for example

B．in addition

C．by contrast

D．in short

7.

A．peace

B．leisure

C．ease

D．risk

8.

A．suffering

B．evolving

C．developing

D．prohibiting

9.

A．ability

B．endurance

C．willingness

D．preference

10.

A．mixture

B．majority

C．quantity

D．crowd

11.

A．smallest

B．worst

C．fewest

D．least

12.

A．separation

B．reservation

C．isolation

D．extinction

13.

A．turning out

B．taking over

C．searching for

D．pulling through

14.

A．sensitive

B．contrary

C．related

D．accustomed

15.

A．Despite

B．Besides

C．Without

D．Except

9 . Singapore, a country with a great population, produces only about 10 percent of its own food needs. Only 1 percent of Singapore’s 724 square kilometers is currently used for agriculture.     1    

Singapore has announced new measures designed to quickly increase local food production in the next ten years, including rooftop farming.     2     The plan includes $21million in government money to support local production of eggs, vegetables and fish in the shortest possible time.

This plan includes efforts to find new farming spaces, such as industrial areas and empty building spaces.     3     Officials say one part of the project aims to establish rooftop farms on public housing parking areas beginning in May.

    4     It is to raise local food production levels to make up for climate change and population growth that could threaten worldwide food supplies. “The serious COVID-19 situation highlights the importance of local food production, as part of Singapore’s strategies to make sure of food safety,” the Food Agency said in a statement.

The plan were announced as the worldwide spread of COVID-19 has caused shortages of many products, including food in some areas. Limitations on population movements around the world have weaken supply chains and raised concern about worsening shortages and price increases.     5    

But it has decided to speed up the process of increasing local production to begin within the next six months.

A．The rising prices are hitting customers hard as well.

B．Singapore’s Food Agency says its goal is specific.

C．Climate change has great influence on food production.

D．And production costs there are higher than the rest of Southeast Asia.

E．It also calls for adding new technologies to improve farming methods.

F．Singapore stated that it has enough food to get through the COVID-19 crisis(危机).

G．It wants to meet 30% of nutritional needs with locally produced food by 2030.

10 . In India, almost all marriages are arranged. Even among the educated middle classes in modern urban India, marriage is as much a concern of the families as it is of the___________. So customary is the practice of_________marriage that there is a special name for it: a "love match".

On my first trip to India, I met many young men and women whose parents were in the process of "getting them married". In many cases, the bride and groom would not meet each other before the marriage. _________they might meet for a brief conversation, and this meeting would take place only after their parents had decided that the match was___________. Parents do not force their children to marry a person who either marriage partner finds unacceptable. But only after one match is refused will another be sought.

As a young American woman in India for the first time, I found this custom of arranged marriage _________How could any intelligent young person _________ to such a marriage without great reluctance? It was_________ to everything I believed about the importance of romantic love as the only basis of a happy marriage.   It was also in conflict with my strongly held beliefs that the choice of such a close and permanent relationship could be made only by individuals___________If anyone had tried to arrange my marriage, I would not have been___________!

Sita, one of my young friends, was a college graduate with a degree in political science. She had been____________ for over a year while her parents were arranging a match for her. I found it difficult to accept the obedient （顺从的） manner in which this well-educated young woman awaited the outcome of a process that would __________ her spending the rest of her life with a man she hardly knew, a total stranger, __________ by her parents.

In frustration and distress, I asked her, "Don't you__________who you marry? ""Of course I care, "she answered." This is why I must let my parents choose a boy for me. My marriage is too important to be arranged by such a (n) _   ________ person as myself. In such matters, it is better to have my parents'__________”。

1.

A．classes

B．individuals

C．society

D．country

2.

A．matched

B．decided

C．concerned

D．arranged

3.

A．After all

B．In addition

C．At most

D．On average

4.

A．comfortable

B．imperfect

C．suitable

D．dissatisfying

5.

A．acceptable

B．amazing

C．depressing

D．strange

6.

A．agree

B．turn

C．exchange

D．devote

7.

A．customary

B．remarkable

C．similar

D．contrary

8.

A．involved

B．present

C．informed

D．available

9.

A．ambitious

B．proud

C．pleased

D．puzzled

10.

A．fighting

B．protesting

C．waiting

D．dreaming

11.

A．profit from

B．hold back

C．act out

D．result in

12.

A．picked out

B．picked up

C．taken up

D．taken out

13.

A．encounter

B．favor

C．care

D．love

14.

A．intelligent

B．unfortunate

C．inexperienced

D．careless

15.

A．blessing

B．guidance

C．fortune

D．promise