1 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well occurring. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality (道德) and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.

Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles shows a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries (铅酸电池), containing almost 300 pounds of lead (铅) in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leaks into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable (高利润的) but deadly business.

Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an unexpected scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare cause one of the biggest environmental problems in the world yet receives little attention.

The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5.5 million people per year, making it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is heavy, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive (认知的) effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.

But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that can be resolved through financial investment (财政投入). Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the unpleasant effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.

1. How does the author describe the lead problem in paragraph 2?

A．By listing some numbers.	B．By analyzing hidden causes.
C．By making an interesting comparison.	D．By explaining its working principle.

2. What can we learn about lead’s harm from the text?

A．Lead enters poor countries in one way.

B．Lead leaking has been avoided in all the countries.

C．Lead will definitely not harm anymore.

D．Lead poisoning may make poor societies poorer.

3. What can be done to solve lead poisoning in developing countries?

A．Fixing these used batteries.	B．Reducing the cost of recycling lead.
C．Ignoring the illegal use of lead.	D．Putting certain effort and money.

4. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

A．The Impacts of Lead Poisoning on Man.

B．The Global Lead Poisoning Problem.

C．The Ways to Solve Lead Problem.

D．The Benefits of Using Electric Vehicles.

5 . ChatGPT has quickly become popular around the world because of its advanced conversational abilities. It can answer questions, do translations, give the main idea of articles and even write codes (代码) for a computer program. It is as good as a human inside a computer.

ChatGPT is making life very convenient. A time might come when people hand it some articles and it makes a well-made report. That could, however, mean job losses. After all, if a computer program can write codes, then it would make a programmer lose his job.

That may be a worry, but it is still too early to worry about that. ChatGPT has more advanced learning features, but it still follows the same technological way. Its biggest advantage lies in the ability to turn words into a language from an ocean of data, but it's still not that creative. AI can quickly draw a picture, but that picture will be based on pictures that it has seen. It can also write books about the future, but the books will be based on articles about the future that it has read.

In comparison, a human brain imagines the future and then tries hard to realize it. AI can imagine a future with faster spaceships, but it can't imagine a world of space as humans can.

So there is no need to worry too much. By being creative there will be plenty of chances for humans to win over AI.

1. What does the underlined word “It” in Paragraph 1 refer to?

A．The world.

B．ChatGPT.

C．A computer.

D．A program.

2. How is the fourth paragraph developed?

A．By telling stories.	B．By giving examples.
C．By listing numbers.	D．By making comparisons.

3. Which is the biggest advantage of ChatGPT according to the passage?

A．It has its own creativity.

B．It has conversational abilities.

C．It has more advanced learning features.

D．It has the ability to turn words into a language.

4. In which part can you find the passage in a newspaper?

A．Sports.

B．Science.

C．Education.

D．Business.

6 . 假定你是李华，在英语课上你们班同学就“转基因作物的利与弊”进行了讨论，请你根据讨论结果写一篇英语短文向校英文报投稿。

利	弊	你的观点
1. 产量高，解决粮食短缺问题； 2. 农药使用少，生产成本低，价格便宜。	1. 可能对人体有害; 2. 可能对环境造成威胁，破坏生态平衡，影响作物的多样性。	?

注意：1. 首句已给出，词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇：农药chemical fertilizer

These days more and more genetically modified crops have been appearing on supermarket shelves, which are favored by many consumers.

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7 . Mark Bertram lost the tips of two fingers at work in 2018 when his hand became trapped in a fan belt. “It’s life-changing but it’s not life-ending,” he says. “Doing work is harder now. Everything is just a little different.”

After two surgeries and occupational therapy, Bertram decided to make light of his condition by asking Eric Catalano, a tattoo (纹身) artist, to create fingernail (手指甲) tattoos. The idea made everyone in the studio laugh — until they saw the final result. “The mood changed,” Catalano recalls from his Eternal Ink Tattoo Studio in Hecker, Illinois. “Everything turned from ridiculous to wow.”

When Catalano posted a photo of the tattoos, a pair of fingernails looking so real that no one could believe their eyes, he had no idea the image would eventually be viewed by millions of people around the world.

The photo pushed Catalano, 40, further into the world of paramedical tattooing. Now people with life-altering scars come from as far away as Ireland to visit his shop. Using flesh-toned inks and a needle, Catalano transforms his clients’ view of themselves.

Leslie Pollan, 32, a dog breeder in Oxford, Mississippi, was bitten on the face by a puppy in 2014. After undergoing countless surgeries to correct a scar on her lip but in vain, she ultimately turned to Catalano, who covered her lip scar, giving her back a piece of her confidence. Pollan says, “It made me have a different outlook on life.”

“Every time I see that emotion from my customers, I’m 100 percent sure this is something that I can’t stop doing.”

1. At first, what did people think of the idea of creating the first fingernail tattoos?

A．Inspiring.

B．Life-changing.

C．Funny.

D．Amazing.

2. What do we know about the posted photo of the fingernail tattoos?

A．No one believed it was real.

B．It enjoyed great popularity.

C．It brought Catalano fame and money overnight.

D．It discouraged Catalano from furthering on in that field.

3. Why does the author mention Pollan’s story?

A．To warn people to stay away from puppies.

B．To prove that plastic surgeries are not so effective.

C．To show Catalano helps change clients’ view of themselves.

D．To highlight that tattooing is very important in our daily life.

4. Which one is the best title of the passage?

A．Magical Tattoos

B．A Tattoo Artist

C．Popularity of Tattoos

D．Development of Tattoos

8 . Search online “work too much” and you’ll get screenfuls of information about the harmful medical, mental and social consequences of spending too much time on the job. However, under current circumstances, the old saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” should be “makes Jack a dead boy.”

A latest study by W.H.O. says that working 55 or more hours a week is a “serious health risk”. It estimates that long working hours led to 745,000 deaths worldwide in 2016, a 29 percent increase over 2000. Men accounted for 72 percent of the deaths; the worst concentrations were in the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia, and particularly among 60 to 79-year-olds who had worked long hours after the age of 45.

These figures make long working hours the biggest work-related health risk of all. Risk of a stroke rises by 35 percent and of deadly heart disease by 17 percent for those who can’t or won’t stop working, compared with people who work 35 to 40 hours a week. The pandemic, and especially remote work, has created new opportunities to work too hard.

The W.H.O. director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that teleworking has blurred the line between work and home and that people who have survived layoffs (裁员) at struggling businesses have ended up working longer hours. One survey found an overwhelming majority of American employees have shortened, postponed or canceled vacations during the pandemic.

The red flags about overwork have been waving for years all around the world. Exhaustion has been identified as a factor in industrial disasters like the BP oil refinery explosion in Texas City in 2005 and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. In Japan, long working hours are so common that “karoshi,” translated as “death by overwork”, is a legally recognized cause of death.

So, working less is a matter of life and death, isn’t it?

1. How does the writer illustrate the risk of overwork in para.3?

A．By giving examples.	B．By listing opinions.
C．By analyzing causes.	D．By describing actions.

2. According to Dr. Ghebreyesus, which of the following is a reason for overworking in the pandemic?

A．The inconvenience in traveling.

B．The loss of work-home boundaries.

C．The increased enthusiasm for work.

D．The lack of interest in entertainment.

3. What is the main idea of paragraph 5?

A．Working less is a matter of life and death.

B．Japan is known for its culture of overworking.

C．The harm of overwork has long been acknowledged.

D．Overwork is a major reason behind industrial disasters.

4. Where can you most likely find this passage?

A．In a college textbook of medicine.

B．In a guidebook for workplace newcomers.

C．In the “opinion” column of a newspaper.

D．In the brochure of a Japanese company.

5. What is the meaning of the word “figure”?

A．人物

B．数字

C．形象

D．特征

10 . Young children are significantly more likely than adults to have their opinions influenced by robots, according to a new research. The study, conducted at the University of Plymouth, compared how adults and children respond to an identical task when in the presence of both their peers (同龄人) and robots.

It showed that while adults regularly have their opinions influenced by peers, something also demonstrated in previous studies, they are largely able to resist(抵制) being persuaded by robots. However, children aged between seven and nine were more likely to give the same responses as the robots, even if they were obviously incorrect.

The study asks people to look at a screen showing four lines and say which two match in length. When alone, people almost never make a mistake but when doing the experiment with others, they tend to follow what others are saying.

When children were alone in the room in this research, they scored 87% on the test, but when the robots join in their score drops to 75%. And of the wrong answers, 74% matched those of the robot.

Professor Belpaeme said, “People often follow the opinions of others and we’ve known for a long time that it is hard to resist taking over views and opinions of people around us. But as robots will soon be found in the home and the workplace, we were wondering if people would follow robots.”

“What our results show is that adults do not follow what the robots are saying. But when we did the experiment with children, they did. It shows children can perhaps have more of an affinity (亲和力) with robots than adults, which does pose the question: What if robots were to suggest, for example, what products to buy or what to think?”

1. What did the adults do when staying with robots?

A．They totally accepted the robots’ suggestions.

B．They tried to persuade robots to resist them.

C．They generally refused the robots’ effects.

D．They usually compared robots with their children.

2. Why did some children make more mistakes in the experiment?

A．Because robots in the presence made mistakes.

B．Because children were not as clever as the adults.

C．Because robots reflected better than human beings.

D．Because children wanted to affect the robots on purpose.

3. What is Professor Belpaeme’s attitude towards the result of the experiment?

A．He is optimistic about the result.	B．He doubts the result of the research.
C．He doesn’t care about the result.	D．He is worried about the future.

4. What should be followed after the last paragraph?

A．What is the meaning of the research?

B．What will be done to solve the problem?

C．What should adults do to avoid the problem?

D．Why are children more likely to be influenced?