1 . In 2019, a white-haired senior was awarded the Friendship Medal, the highest order of honor of China for foreigners. It was Isabel Crook. In her more than a century of life, she spent more than 90 years in China and cultivated (培养) a large number of foreign language talents for China.
In 1915, Isabel was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1938, Isabel couldn’t wait to return to China. With hard work, she and her colleague completed the survey of over 1,500 families in some villages in Bishan County. She recorded the daily life of the villagers in Xinglongchang with detailed field notes, which give the young people today some idea of the state of affairs in villages at that time.
In 1947, Isabel and her husband David Crook came to China to observe and study the ongoing land reform. A year later, they completed the study and accepted the invitation to stay in China for language teaching.
One could hardly imagine the teaching conditions in the midst of a war. They asked their students to take small stools (凳子) with them so that they could give class everywhere. They tailored (定制) teaching approaches to suit students’ different language proficiency levels. Without handy teaching materials, they collected articles from English newspapers and magazines. In oral English teaching, Isabel asked students to watch their teachers in a given conversation first. Since there were no tape recorders at school, she had to perform the conversation again and again.
Isabel retired in 1981, but she returned to Southwest China many times to set up scholarship for children from poor families. She also went to Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and other places to help with foreign language teaching. Isabel died in 2023 in Beijing.
1. What do we know about Isabel according to the text?| A．She got China’s highest honor for foreigners. |
| B．She received her college education in China. |
| C．She returned to China as a teacher at age 23. |
| D．She helped children in need all over China. |
| A．In 1915. | B．In 1938. | C．In 1948. | D．In 1981. |
| A．Boring but helpful. | B．Simple and modern. |
| C．Traditional but attractive. | D．Flexible and personalized. |
| A．Her working experiences were rich. |
| B．Her life in China was quite colorful. |
| C．She devoted herself to teaching in China. |
| D．She showed great interest in Chinese history. |
2 . As a child, Liu Wenwen disliked the suona, a “loud, high-pitched” traditional Chinese musical instrument, an ancestral heritage of her family that was to become her career.
Her peers at primary school laughed at her, saying her whole family was engaged only in “weddings and funerals.” Indeed, these are the two major occasions where the horn-like wind instrument is played in China’s rural areas. Liu felt ashamed. People admired things that were modern and international. “Suona, in comparison, was considered an art of the hillbilly.” Her father’s family has performed suona for seven generations.
The music is rooted in Liu’s DNA, but it takes time and hard work to become a skilled musician. The instrument was so loud that it annoyed the neighbors when she practiced at home. “So my parents would wake me up at 4 a.m. every day and take me to practice outside in a park.”
While she followed her parents to play the suona as a child, she only fell in love with the instrument at university. She found suona music beautiful for the first time in 2008, when she entered Shanghai Conservatory of Music to learn the instrument more systematically.
On China’s social media platforms, her name is often followed by a video of her live performance at a concert in Sydney, Australia, alongside award-winning composer Tan Dun in 2017. For her debut on the international stage, she was playing Hundreds of Birds Paying Homage to Phoenix, a masterpiece that often represents excellence in suona performance.
Liu promoted the “hillbilly” music to an international audience, thanks to Tan and his team, who recomposed the traditional music and arranged the piece into an orchestra. “It was a smooth dialogue between a Chinese instrument and a Western orchestra, loved by the musicians and audience alike,” she said. “I felt my hard work had paid off. I trained for over 20 years, probably just to win cheers and applause for traditional Chinese music on the international stage.”
1. What can we learn about Liu from the first two paragraphs?| A．She was born into a musical family. |
| B．She enjoyed playing the suona as a child. |
| C．She showed a talent for suona when she was young. |
| D．She felt ashamed of admiring modern and international things. |
| A．To get more time for her practice. | B．To avoid disturbing the neighbors. |
| C．To spend more time with her parents. | D．To make practising the suona a habit. |
| A．Audience like Chinese instruments better than Western orchestra. |
| B．Liu’s performance at a Sydney concert got her recognized by the public. |
| C．Liu promoted traditional Chinese music to the whole world with her parents. |
| D．Social media is a major platform to carry forward traditional Chinese music. |
| A．Technology. | B．Education. |
| C．People. | D．Entertainment. |
3 . Zong Qinghou, a soft drinks giant from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, died of an illness at the age of 79. There has been much mourning at his passing on Feb. 25, 2024 as he was well-known as the founder of a company, headquartered in his hometown in the late 1980s, which later developed into the Wahaha Group, a major soft drinks company.
He is known to the public for three things — his rags-to-riches rise, his long-term frugal (节俭的) lifestyle, and his devotion to promoting China’s national industries. Forbes ranked him, with a wealth of about $5.9 billion, No.53 among Chinese billionaires last year.
Yet besides, it is also worthwhile to think over the question about whether his success in business can be imitated today and what lessons policymakers can learn from his self-made business success as they try to enrich the soil for setting up business.
Before winning a contract (合同) to work as a salesperson of a small school-run factory selling writing materials, iced treats and soft drinks in Hangzhou in 1987, Zong worked as a traveling salesman for nearly a decade after working for 15 years on various posts in local farming communities with Grade-9 education.
His sharp business sense, which he owed to poverty instead of the genes (基因) of the Zhejiang business community, enabled him to recognize business opportunities at a time when the country had just carried out the change from a planned economy to a socialist market one.
The broad space he enjoyed as a sales representative of the factory enabled him to continuously sharpen his sales strategies and enlarge his network of business partners. That not only helped him gather the start-up funds he later used to contract the whole factory, but also influenced his later management style, which he summed up as always trying to make things simpler.
As he told the media, it is the spirit of adventure of his generation and their down-to-earth work style that deserve attention, not his lifestyle, which was a personal choice.
1. Which aspect of Zong Qinghou does Paragraph 2 focus on?| A．His habits. | B．His interest. |
| C．His lifestyle. | D．His achievements. |
| A．To tell how he won contracts. | B．To tell how different his life was. |
| C．To show the ways to run a business. | D．To show its influence on his business. |
| A．His sharp sense in business. | B．His broad space and freedom. |
| C．His long-term simple lifestyle. | D．His business community’s genes. |
| A．Modest. | B．Determined. | C．Knowledgeable. | D．Humorous. |
4 . Every parent remembers their child’s firsts: their first tooth, their first steps, their first words. Pennsylvania mum, Michelle Wallace can add another first to that list. Her daughter, Olive Wallace, only ten years old, sketched out her first musical composition in pencil. Days later, the musical piece became popular.
Olive Wallace’s grandmother is a retired Californian music teacher. Olive’s aunt also teaches music. Olive herself plays two instruments. “Olive has played the violin for 2 years at her elementary school,” says Michelle. “She also plays the clarinet and sings in her school’s choir. She loves music!”
When Olive shared with her mom the composition she’d written, Michelle shared it with the TikTok (抖音) community. “My 10-year-old daughter wrote this,” Michelle explained in a TikTok video. “Could somebody play this? I need to know if it’s any good or if it makes any sense.”
After Michelle’s video was viewed six million times, the composition had been played and shared by hundreds of TikTok musicians, including well-known professionals.
Actually Olive intended her composition as a song for the Elps, a civilization (文明) of her own creation. On her Elpjungle website, Olive writes about Elps: “For a long time, Elps had kings. King after king the Elp kingdom was led, until one king, King Whirlpool, suddenly for unknown reasons, started to go crazy. He was later overthrown and the queens took over. This song was created to show the end of the kings’ rule and the beginning of the queens. It was titled ‘For Greatness We Bring’ because shortly after the new queen was elected, a whole new kind of Elps was brought in.”
The TikTok musical world used their talents to bring her composition to life by playing the composition on many instruments. It’s clear that Olive has a bright and creative future ahead of her.
1. What can we know about Olive from paragraph 2?| A．She wants to be a teacher. | B．She comes from a musical family. |
| C．Her aunt plays two instruments. | D．Her mother is a music teacher. |
| A．To express her thanks. | B．To learn about its quality. |
| C．To show her devotion. | D．To make it gain popularity. |
| A．The reason for creating it. | B．The way to bring it to life. |
| C．The public interest in it. | D．The story behind it. |
| A．Disapproving. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Unclear. |
5 . The Maryland Center for History and Culture(MCHC) is currently hosting “The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited”. The exhibition spotlights Henson’s unique contributions to children’s education, including his creation of the Muppets (布偶).
Born in 1936 in Mississippi, Henson grew up in Maryland. His creative talents were evident when he was a student at high school. He loved cartooning and creating sets for school theater productions. While a freshman at university, Henson made puppets for a local TV station. The station’s producers were so impressed that they asked him to produce his own puppet show. Called Sam and Friends, the program started in 1955. Viewers loved Henson’s playful characters, including an early version of Kermit the Frog.
While at university, Henson majored in home economics. At the time, it was the only major that offered classes in sewing and textiles (纺织品).Henson not only honed his creative skills at university, but he was also good at marketing and business. “He was an entrepreneur who happened to get into puppetry, ” said Deborah Wood, MCHC’s learning manager.
In 1959, Henson married Jane Nebel, whom be had met at university. The couple established Muppets Inc. which later became the Jim Henson Company. It was there that Focus Bert, Ernie, Miss Piggy, and other Muppets were created for Sesame Street, a popular children’s television program.Generations of children around the world have grown up watching and laming from the Muppets.
Henson, who died in 1990, created not just the Muppets, but also films, TV commercials, variety shows, and more. The exhibition shows every aspect of his career. This includes some lesser-known works, including The Cube, a short experimental film that was nominated (提名) for an Academy Award.
Visitors also get a chance to appreciate Henson’s creative process and inventiveness through hands-on displays. They can even make their own Muppets. “For me, I think the really powerful message of this exhibition is the fact that it covers Henson’s whole life and his whole career, ” said Chloe Green, public programs manager at the MCHC.
1. What’s paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．An interesting exhibition about Henson. | B．Viewers’attitude to Henson’s works. |
| C．Henson’s exceptional talents in creation. | D．Characters in Henson’s famous works. |
| A．Changed. | B．Improved. | C．Found. | D．Shared. |
| A．It was first played in 1955. | B．It was a popular radio program. |
| C．It was targeted at children. | D．It was an early version of Kermit the Frog. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Opposed. | C．Doubtful. | D．Indifferent. |
6 . At 6 feet, 7 inches, Will Allen was a natural at basketball. He received scholarship offers from more than a hundred colleges. He finally chose the University of Miami.
Going away to college meant leaving the family farm. He remembered how hard that life on the farm had been. Now that his life was full of possibilities, he swore he would never go back to farming.
After college, Allen began a pro-basketball career in Belgium, where, ironically (讽刺地), he rediscovered farming. He found the farmers there farmed the way his parents had back home, caring for the land without using chemicals and fertilizers.
Allen and his family moved back to the United States in 1977 after he retired from basketball. They settled in Milwaukee, where his wife’s family owned a farm. In 1993, Allen bought the last remaining farm in the city of Milwaukee, where he began his career as an urban farmer. Later he formed his own organization Growing Power, one of the world’s top urban agricultural organizations.
Allen also travelled across the United States, Africa, and Central Asia to help people grow food more efficiently in ways that fit in with their own culture. “Food is in short supply all over the world right now,” he says. “A lot of people are hungry. We need to grow food everywhere we can—in backyards and side yards, on rooftops, and even in buildings.”
He has spoken about urban agriculture around the world and is currently designing a vertical farm which is a new way to help feed more people in cities. “My main mission is to bring food into people’s lives and train people how to grow food. That continues to be important to me. ” said Allen. He said so, and he did so.
“Growing food is powerful,” Allen says. “It can change the world!”
1. What do we know about Will Allen?| A．He wished to get away from his family. | B．He had a talent for playing basketball. |
| C．He got used to the hard life on the farm. | D．He was admitted to only several universities. |
| A．Grow what is right. | B．Everyone should take action. |
| C．Focus on environment. | D．Plant wherever possible. |
| A．Ambitious. | B．Fortunate. |
| C．Traditional. | D．Adventurous. |
| A．Childhood Dream Leads to Future Career | B．Urban Agriculture Holds Great Promise |
| C．Give up Basketball and Take up Farming | D．Return to Farming and Grow Food in the City |
7 . Scientists regularly make vital new discoveries, but few can claim to have invented an entirely new field of science. Chemist Carolyn Bertozzi is one of them. Her discovery of biorthogonal chemistry (生物正交化学) in 2003 created a brand-new discipline of scientific investigation, which has enabled countless advances in medical science and led to a far greater understanding of biology at a molecular (分子的) level. On October 5, Bertozzi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with two other professors. She is also the only woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in science this year, after an all-male line-up in 2021.
Bertozzi was the middle daughter of an MIT physics professor and a secretary. Few predicted that Bertozzi would be the most famous person in the family. While her academic performance was not bad in high school, she was fond of playing soccer. She end ed up being admitted to Harvard University. Despite her talent in soccer, she found it too time-consuming and quit the sport to devote herself to academics.
But before becoming a rock star scientist, Bertozzi almost became an actual rock star. When she started at Harvard, she was tempted to major in music. That idea was “unpopular” with her parents, and she was timid about defying them. Instead, she chose the premed (医学预科的) track that included classes in math and sciences, and declared herself a biology major at the end of her first year of college.
Her interest in music did not completely fall by the wayside, however. Bertozzi played keyboards and sang backup vocals for a hair metal band. Bertozzi, however, did not play with the band for long. Once the band’s practices and performances conflicted with her labs and classes, there was only one outcome.
Plus, she’d soon have organic chemistry to think about a course which is infamous for weeding out pre-meds. Without any clear career ambitions up to that point, Bertozzi had been thinking about possibly becoming a doctor when, in her sophomore year (大二学年), she suddenly fell so head over heels in love with her chemistry course that she couldn’t tear herself away from her textbooks long enough to go out on Saturday nights. A torture to many was pure pleasure for her. Bertozzi changed her major from biology to chemistry a year later.
Bertozzi has sometimes joked about her having missed out on her chance to follow Morello to LosAngeles. “I didn’t get on that bus, and my playing is now limited to ‘The Wheel's on the Bus Go Round,’ I’m waiting for my sons to get old enough to appreciate 1980s heavy metal!”
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Bertozzi is one of those scientists who made significant new discoveries. |
| B．Bertozzi was the only female to win a Nobel Prize in science in 2021. |
| C．Bertozzi played keyboards and sang backup vocals throughout her college years. |
| D．Bertozzi initially planned to become a doctor. |
| A．tell | B．disobey | C．approach | D．threaten |
| A．easy and enjoyable |
| B．difficult to pass for pre-med students |
| C．popular among hair metal band players |
| D．a required course for all college students |
| A．Brave and sympathetic. |
| B．Athletic and critical. |
| C．Humble and passionate. |
| D．Talented and creative. |
8 . Inspirational ideas have a habit of striking in the most unforeseen places. For example, dreams operate on the level of stories, making them primary sources of ideas and inspirations. The following are four great ideas created from dreams.
Elias Howe’s sewing machine
In 1895, Elias Howe was struggling with the needle (针) design. One night, he had a dream that some people on an unknown island caught him and were preparing to turn him into a meal. They were dancing around waving their spears (矛) in the air, and then he saw it. The spears had holes at the tip. It helped him solve his problem.
Einstein’s theory of relativity
In his dream , Albert Einstein was talking to a farmer who was telling him about the fenced (被围住的) cows. However, the farmer saw something different from him. When waking up, he realized that a similar event could be different from a different point of view. Through this, the theory of relativity slowly began to fall into place.
Beatles’hit song Yesterday
Yesterday by the famous band Beatles is one of the most covered songs in history . It all came to one of the band members, Paul McCartney, in a dream. One night in 1963 he suddenly woke up with a tune (曲调) in his head. He got up and started playing the notes until the song came into being.
The periodic table
While in his mid - thirties, Dmitri Mendeleev, a known Russian chemist, was struggling to place 56 known elements on a periodic table. Then one night in a dream, he saw a table where all aspects fell into place as called for. When he woke up, he wrote it down on a piece of paper.
1. What inspired Elias Howe to design the needle of sewing machines ?| A．Spears with holes at the tip. | B．A big meal he had in his dream. |
| C．A talk with the people trapping him. | D．The dancing moves of some strangers. |
| A．The sewing machine. | B．The theory of relativity. |
| C．The song Yesterday. | D．The periodic table. |
| A．A dream can be a wish that your heart makes. |
| B．Common people can also have great creations. |
| C．Clever minds never stop thinking in their lives. |
| D．Great ideas sometimes arise in an unexpected way. |
9 . A Nigerian mom found out the hard way that jaundice (黄疸) is still a dangerous disease in Africa — but now she’s putting an end to the disease with her new tech startup, making cribs (婴儿床).
Virtue Oboro’s son, Tombra, was just 48 hours old when he had to be rushed to the NICU, suffering from jaundice, which causes yellow skin and can lead to permanent damage or even death. The treatment is fairly simple and widespread in developing countries: blue-light phototherapy (光疗).
Virtue’s hospital had no phototherapy devices, so Tombra had to receive a risky emergency blood transfusion (输血). Her son made a full recovery, but Virtue was changed by the experience. “I felt like some of the things I experienced could have been avoided,” the visual designer said. “I thought, is there something I could do to make the pain less for the babies and the mothers?”
What could a visual designer do? She designed the Crib A’Glow and named her new company Tiny Hearts. The mobile phototherapy unit is powered by the African sun, and costs one-sixth the price of a normal phototherapy crib — and is produced in her homeland of Nigeria. Virtue’s husband had some experience working with solar panels before, so he lent a hand to the visual designer, who was busy sailing in the unknown waters of a new profession. She worked with a baby doctor through the design process to ensure all the details would benefit the tiny babies.
The Crib A’Glow can now be found in 500 hospitals across Nigeria and neighboring Ghana. It has been used on 300, 000 babies already. Virtue, who has also become a 2022 awardee for the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, says a further 200, 000 babies will be saved from jaundice by using the cribs in rural areas — no hospitals or electricity needed.
1. What happened to Tombra shortly after he was born?| A．He suffered damage from a blood transfusion. | B．He came down with jaundice. |
| C．He received blue-light phototherapy. | D．He got separated from his mother. |
| A．It is solar-powered. | B．It is heavy. |
| C．It has been used worldwide. | D．It is expensive. |
| A．To highlight the importance of phototherapy devices. |
| B．To stress the shortage of cribs in rural hospitals. |
| C．To arouse people’s awareness of jaundice. |
| D．To predict the bright future of Virtue’s crib. |
| A．Tough and generous. | B．Hardworking and productive. |
| C．Caring and creative. | D．Sociable and determined. |
10 . In memory of Eleanor
— a woman ________
[1] Eleanor Lowenthal — my grandmother — in desperate need of income to put her husband through graduate school, walked into the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. There, she convinced the scientists that she was the perfect person to mount (安放) and catalog their growing ant collection.
[2] At the time, a promising graduate student named E.O. Wilson was coming up in the department. Wilson, who passed away in December 2021, was called the “father of biodiversity”. When Eleanor joined the department, researchers were racing to collect and catalog specimens (标本). As Wilson shifted research towards smaller, less glamorous species that nonetheless held ecological significance, he set the stage for conservation biology. Behind the scenes, technicians like my grandmother preserved the specimen that furthered Wilson’s work and continue to provide new insights and opportunities for researchers across the globe.
[3] At the time, hiring a 21-year-old woman who had dropped out of art school was a significant gamble. It paid off. Eleanor’s job as a technician required the same manual flexibility and coordination that art school had demanded. The job required her to work quickly, yet precisely. Rushing could risk ruining a rare specimen, but Eleanor could process ants as quickly as Wilson could mail them back from his expeditions to Australia and Papua New Guinea. She sometimes mounted as many as 200 a day.
[4]It wasn’t a coincidence that Eleanor found work in entomology. Wilson’s high-profile research on ants cracked an opening for women in previously male-dominated field of conservation, which was centered around studying big game in the first half of the 20th century.
[5] Even when women’s early work has been credited, the language used to describe their contributions often minimized their role in the team, not mentioning them by name. A recently discovered department report includes lines such as, “A large amount of spreading and setting insects was done by the lady assistant,” and “The collection has been remarkably free from pests… due to the continuous care of the lady assistant.”
[6] The department now functions like a library (specimen can be borrowed for study or examined on site), and serves as a training center for the next generation of scientists who use the collection in ways Wilson and my grandmother probably never imagined.
[7] Eleanor didn’t realize the impact of her contribution at the time — the technician role was just a job that paid $38 a week. But she’s come to appreciate the significance of her work on a project that spans centuries. “You can see how it goes from one era to another,” says Eleanor. “It’s so important to have this library for people to make connections and new discoveries.”
1. The first two paragraphs write about _________.| A．why Eleanor was chosen to be an assistant for Wilson |
| B．what convinced Wilson switch to the study of ants |
| C．how Eleanor’s and Wilson’s career paths crossed |
| D．when technicians like Eleanor started to get hired |
| A．To prove how important women’s early work was. |
| B．To show women’s role at the time was not fully recognized. |
| C．To give a vivid description of the nature of women’s work. |
| D．To teach the wisdom of writing good science reports. |
| A．Today’s researchers are still enjoying the benefits of Eleanor’s work. |
| B．Eleanor is now working as a supervisor in the department. |
| C．New scientific discoveries are the results of collective wisdom. |
| D．Nobody’s work is as important as Eleanor’s in the department. |
| A．whose struggle mirrored the social changes in the status of women |
| B．whose work won her fame in the then male-dominated field of conservation |
| C．who pioneered a unique ant management system at the Harvard Museum |
| D．who worked behind the scenes with extraordinary speed, accuracy and artistry |
