1 . 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。

China’s top legislature (立法机构) passed the Yellow River Protection Law on Sunday. Due     1     (come) into effect from April 1, the law explains water conservation on the river basin, ecological protection and     2     (restore), conservation and intensive use of water resources, flood control and pollution prevention among other measures.

The Yellow River, the second     3     (long) river in China, is called the mother river of the Chinese nation. Since the founding of new China, large-scale protection of the river     4     (carry) out and remarkable achievements made. The introduction of the Yellow River Protection Law will further enhance the river’s governance (管理) and protection.

The law     5     (cover) a series of key issues, such as ecological environment fragility and water shortage. This means the settlement of some of the “pain points”     6     have long troubled the river now has a legal basis. The law also     7     (specific) highlights the need to strengthen the protection, inheritance and promotion of the Yellow River culture.

The Yellow River basin is home     8     a lot of cultural relics, ancient documents and other important cultural heritage, and     9     (they) protection is a very important part of the river’s protection and governance, since it is of irreplaceable significance to promoting     10     inheritance (继承) of Chinese civilization.

2 . Among the constant adjustive education standards and requirements, it’s important to ask a question: exactly what do we want in a high school graduate?

Some people think the goal is to enter college and earn a bachelor’s degree. Others find that interpretation too narrow, preferring that young people leave school with the skills to move into living-wage jobs. But one thing many people can embrace is that high school graduates are skilled in basic math and English.

A proposed law, House Bill 1308,could ruin that goal. Students must do the following things to get a diploma: earn 24 credits of coursework; complete a High School and Beyond Plan matching those courses; meet one requirement of a series of “graduation pathways”. The problem is that these pathways don’t work for all kids.

In large part, that’s because they guide students toward college standards. Last year, after surveying nearly 1,000 students, researchers discovered that 18% of students said they were “not good” at math, and 33% said they were poor test-takers. For them, the current pathways are a barrier because of their emphasis on these skills.

The new pathway is instead focused on performance. It would allow kids to create a presentation—say an exhibit or report — demonstrating mastery of two core subjects, but not necessarily math or English. When the bill came up for discussion, over 350 people showed their support, because it’s possible that through the performance pathway, a student could create a project emphasizing mastery in “fine arts” and “health and fitness”. Rep. Sharon favors the proposal. In a hearing, she spoke of her granddaughter, who wrote and self-published a novel while still in school, to illustrate the kind of project is workable. While Tafona Ervin worries that the lack of emphasis on math and English could lead students to graduate without solid skills.

If the purpose of education is to ensure that young people are prepared to pursue a fulfilling life, finishing school uncertain of one’s abilities in math and English weakens education’s goal.

1. Why is the question mentioned in the first paragraph?

A．To make an argument.	B．To introduce the topic.
C．To raise an education problem.	D．To clarify a concept.

2. How many items does House Bill 1308require for high school students to graduate?

A．One.

B．Two.

C．Three.

D．Four.

3. How does the writer make his points persuasive in Para.4?

A．By making comparisons.	B．By offering statistics.
C．By providing suggestions.	D．By doing experiments.

4. What does the author think of House Bill 1308?

A．Workable.

B．Effective.

C．Awful.

D．Reasonable.

3 . A bill to conserve endangered species was passed by the U.S. House in a 231-to-190 vote on Tuesday.

The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would create an annual fund of more than $1.3 billion, given to states, and territories for wildlife conservation on the ground. While threatened species have been recognized and protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1973, that law does not provide constant funding to actively maintain their numbers.

The effort comes as scientists and international organizations sound the alarm about accelerating species decline.

“Too many people don’t realize that about one-third of our wildlife is at increased risk of extinction,” said lead House sponsor Debbie Ding-ell, echoing (呼应) a recent study about climate change.

In the United States, there are more than 1,600 endangered or threatened species, but state agencies have identified more than 7 times that number in need of conservation assistance in their wildlife action plans.

“The bottom line is, when we save wildlife we save for ourselves,” said Collin O’ Mara, CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, which supports the bill. He said species loss threatens everything from the insects that pollinate (授粉) plants in the food chain, to sea life that helps to reduce damages to coastlines from storm.

The bill would improve a 1937 law, the Pittman-Robertson Act, which was passed in response to decreasing game and waterfowl species. That law allows states to tax hunting supplies to pay for wildlife and habitat restoration, but that money is not enough to do the same for non-game species.

The act would also invest more in conservation than the existing program for threatened non-game species, called the State Wildlife Grant Program, which awarded states a total of $56 million this year.

1. What do we know about the Endangered Species Act?

A．It does not involve continuous funding.

B．It was passed by the House this Tuesday.

C．It has proved to be a failed Act.

D．It ensured the population of all the species.

2. What did Debbie Dingell show us in paragraph 4?

A．Human behavior causes species to decline.

B．People’s efforts matter a lot in conservation.

C．People lack awareness of animal protection.

D．The decline of species is beyond imagination.

3. Why are “insects” and “sea life” mentioned in paragraph 6?

A．To indicate they are at risk of dying out.

B．To illustrate how to protect them properly.

C．To show they’re more important than others.

D．To tell man and nature are an organic whole.

4. In which section of the website would this text appear?

A．Entertainment.

B．News.

C．Technology.

D．Health.

5 . The recent reports of a 4-year-old girl on a Shanghai beach have gone viral on social media platforms, provoking debate about whether China should criminalize negligence in child supervision.

The father of the little girl claimed that he left her alone on the beach for about 12 minutes to fetch his phone. However, she was nowhere to be found when he was back. Surveillance (监控) videos show that she waited for about 10 minutes before walking toward the water’s edge alone, and then disappeared into the water. Two weeks later, her body was discovered about 100 kilometers away in neighboring Zhejiang Province.

The core issue in this case is the father’s leaving his young daughter unattended on the beach, causing her tragic death. Should such behavior, when it causes harm to a child, be seen as a criminal act? In an online survey, more than 90 percent of respondents insisted that the father be held legally responsible and face criminal punishments.

Nevertheless, according to Liu Chunquan, a lawyer, it may not satisfy the criteria for criminal negligence, since the primary focus of Chinese criminal law is on extreme cases of parental neglect, such as physical abuse and mental torture. Rarely do legal authorities charge parents; instead, they are just likely to face penalties consisting of warnings and fines.

In 2022, a 2-year-old baby drowned in a cesspool while in the company of his father. The court ruled shared responsibility between the father and the cesspool’s owner, with a 7:3 proportion. The owner was ordered to pay 20,000 yuan to the child’s family. Unluckily, similar cases do exist nationwide. Roughly, 100,000 children lose their lives in accidents annually in China, which is largely due to negligence, such as parents leaving their children unattended, either in locked cars or at home. Besides, drowning is now the main cause of death for children aged 1 to 14 years old.

It is no wonder that an increasing number of netizens request that specific laws and regulations be passed to ensure the safety of children and their well-being. Hopefully, criminalizing child supervision negligence in China can serve as a warning and precaution.

However, downsides of introducing such legislation may also emerge. For instance, it’s difficult to distinguish between a regrettable accident and criminal negligence, so that over-criminalization can be triggered, in which well-meaning parents making honest mistakes are charged with a crime.

Therefore, a more balanced approach to addressing the issue of infant safety should involve a combination of new legislation, education and support services. The ultimate objective is to prevent similar catastrophes in the future. We must recognize that children are not only their parents’ offspring, but also the nation’s future.

1. What can we infer from the tragedy of the 4-year-old girl?

A．Her father’s carelessness and negligence should be to blame.

B．The beach in Shanghai should not be open to small children.

C．Her father has been sentenced to severe penalties by the police.

D．She would have survived if she had not waited in the water for a long time.

2. What are the figures in paragraph 5 intended to prove?

A．Irresponsible adults contribute to children’s death.	B．People can’t be too concerned about child safety.
C．Kids shouldn’t be allowed to swim alone.	D．Parents’ constant monitoring is a must.

3. Updated legislation in child supervision is in demand for the following reasons except _______.

A．the mild penalties in the existing laws	B．parents’ ignorance of potential dangers
C．frequent occurrence of such incidents	D．masses of netizens’ urgent appeals

4. What attitude does the author hold to criminalizing child supervision negligence in China?

A．Indifferent.

B．Negative.

C．Objective.

D．Supportive.

6 . The Yurok people have lived along the Klamath River, which flows from the Cascades in Oregon southwest through Northern California, for thousands of years, protecting the region and river from which they — and others — draw sustenance (生计).

But as development and pollution continue to reduce the number of fish in the river and the quantity and quality of its waters, the Yurok Tribe is legalizing (合法化) the tribe’s longstanding care by granting the Rights of Personhood to the Klamath, the first river in North America to have such rights declared.

The Yurok Tribal Council’s May 2019 resolution means the river has the same legal rights as a human under tribal law. This order allows people to bring law cases on behalf of the river when its rights are violated. According to the resolution, the tribe’s intention is to provide a legal basis for safeguarding the river and its ecosystem, especially in the face of water diversion, industrial pollution, and climate change impacts, among other threats. In a testimony (证词) delivered to the U. S. House of Representatives in October 2019, Yurok Tribe Vice Chairman Frankie Myers said this legal framework could create a path to ward a more thoughtful view of the rights of nature in other communities and courts, and that any money awarded by the Yurok courts will fund cleanup and restoration projects to remedy the litigated harms.

The Yurok Tribe’s resolution draws lessons from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and echoes the efforts of other Indigenous tribes, including the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, which adopted the Rights of wild rice, in December 2018. “This is a very important step forward in the Rights of Nature movement,” Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund commented.

1. Which of the following can be used to describe Yurok people?

A．A conqueror.

B．A guardian.

C．A governor.

D．A consumer.

2. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The process of legalization.	B．The tradition of Yurok tribe.
C．The reason behind the legalization.	D．The importance of the Klamath River.

3. What does the law aim to do?

A．Win an award in cleanup projects.

B．Protect the personhood of the river.

C．Fight against global water pollution.

D．Improve the government legal system.

4. What can we learn from Yurok Tribe according to the last paragraph?

A．Time and tide wait for no man.

B．Birds of a feather flock together.

C．Past experience is a guide for the future.

D．All things are difficult before they are easy.

9 . My generation — people born after 1990 — are accustomed to “all-in-platform” life, where we use mobile apps of different platforms to do almost everything in life.

For instance, I ordered a cup of coffee on Monday using an online delivery app. Then, I called a taxi by tapping on the app of a ride-booking service. Next, I bought some necessities on shopping platform Taobao. That done, I moved on to various other online destinations to get my daily fix of music, reading, social networking and so forth.

Platforms now play an increasingly important role in almost all aspects of day-to-day life, not just in economic and political processes. Consumption and social interaction are closely linked to platforms now.

But, I began to get confused recently. I thought I was being treated differently. My friend and I called a taxi at the same time on a ride-hailing platform (打车平台) and found that for the same destination, the prices were different. The price indicated on my phone was higher. One of the potential reasons could have been that I regularly use the ride-hailing platform and have a higher ranking while my friend doesn’t use it that often. So, the ride-hailing platform offers discounts to newbies like her, to attract and have such customers.

China’s latest efforts in regulating monopolistic or improper market behavior are of great significance in protecting consumers’ lawful rights.

“The essence of platform-based monopoly (垄断) is that a large number of users are gathered on only a select few platform companies, leading to uneven data gathering different platforms. But in China some platforms use their own data and traffic (流量) to expand capital in a disorderly way,” said Wang Yong, deputy director of the Institute of Economics at Tinghua University.

Data monopoly also brought another inconvenience for comumers — platforms block links to each other. For instance, link to WeChat Pay of Tencent is not available on Alibuba’s Taobao while there is no Alipay link on JD app’s payment options.

Last year, Meituan was charged with preventing customers from using Alipay as a payment option on Meituan apps and platforms.

In July, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched a six-month special rectification (专项治理) for the internet industry, asking platform operators to stop blocking each other’s link.

“More efforts should also be made to strike a good balance between personal information protection and interconnectivity between platforms Companies are being encouraged to further develop data encryption (加密) technology so that the data are available but not visible.”

1. What is the author’s purpose in writing Para.2?

A．To offer some tips on using apps on mobile phone.

B．To share his experience with mobile apps.

C．To further explain what is “all-in-platform” life.

D．To help readers familiarize themselves with mobile apps.

2. What could be inferred from Paragraph 4?

A．The author encountered so called “big data price discrimination”.

B．The author and his friend were treated differently by taxi drivers.

C．Due to the author's higher ranking, the platform offered him a cheaper price.

D．The ride-hailing platform offers discounts to regular customers.

3. The purpose of the platforms blocking each other's links is________.

A．to gather personal information

B．to expand capital

C．to protect consumers' rights

D．to use their data and traffic wisely

4. What is the author's attitude towards data monopoly?

A．Sympathetic.	B．Approving.
C．Critical.	D．Grateful.

5. What does the passage focus on?

A．Data monopolies and the inconvenience they bring to mobile app life.

B．Mobile apps have greatly changed our lives.

C．How to protect personal information on mobile apps.

D．Platforms have impacted every aspect of our daily lives.

10 . The Food and Drug Administration (F. D. A.) announced a new proposal on Wednesday that would change the criteria for which packaged foods the agency considers “healthy”, in an attempt to modernize its approach to nutrition and reduce the burden of diet-related diseases.

Currently, about 5 percent of all packaged foods are labeled “healthy”, according to the agency. The definition, which was set in 1994, allows for food manufacturers to add the word “healthy” to their products, as long as the products have limited amounts of total fat, saturated (饱和的) fat, cholesterol and sodium (钠) and provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of one or more of the following nutrients: vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein or dietary fiber. (Seafood, game meat and raw fruits and vegetables have slightly different criteria.) In 2021, the F. D. A. updated its guidelines to allow for some foods to contain more total fat and to include some that provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of vitamin D. Importantly, there is currently no limit on added sugars under the current definition- an omission that the F. D. A. believes is inconsistent with today’s nutrition science.

“The old rule was really outdated— you could create any kind of Frankenstein food that met the nutrient criteria and label it as healthy,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor of nutrition in Boston. “This is a major advance.”

The proposed rule, which the agency announced to coincide with Wednesday’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, introduces a new limit on added sugars-in general, no more than 2.5 grams per serving, although this can vary depending on the food.

The new definition aims to encourage healthy eating by prioritizing a mix of vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, proteins and certain oils, including vegetable oils.   A “healthy” food would need to contain a minimum amount of at least one of those food groups and be under the proposed limits for saturated fats and added sugars. Raw whole fruits and vegetables would automatically qualify. Many sugary cereals (谷物), highly sweetened yogurts and white breads, which might currently qualify as “healthy” under the existing definition, would be removed under the new rule．

1. What can we know about the old rule?

A．It was set in 1994.

B．It can guarantee people’s health.

C．It has strict limit on added sugar.

D．It was consistent with today’s nutrition science.

2. What’s Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian’s attitude to the new proposal?

A．Negative.

B．Doubtful.

C．Uncaring.

D．Supportive.

3. Which of the following will automatically qualify for the new proposal?

A．Seafood.

B．Highly sweetened yogurts.

C．Raw whole fruits and vegetables.

D．Food containing large amounts of total fat.

4. Where is the text probably taken from?

A．A diary.

B．A textbook.

C．A newspaper.

D．A science fiction.