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。
Mandarin Chinese(普通话)is the mother tongue of over 873 million people, making it the most 1. (wide) spoken first language in the world. Each year more and more students around the world 2. mother tongue is not Mandarin are studying it with enthusiasm. Let’s take Russia 3. example.
The number of Mandarin learners in Russia 4. (grow) hugely from 17,000 to 56,000 in the past 10 years, For the first time in 2019, over 5. (hundred) of middle school students in Russia will take Mandarin as a subject in the USE (the Unified State Exam), a national entrance exam that l1th graders must pass 6. (enter) college.
“The idea of teaching a foreign language at school is to 7. (broad) students’ horizons, giving them the ability to get all sorts of information and a chance to be more successful in the future. As 8. result. those who learn and know Mandarin will surely benefit much from it,” said Ivan Yaschenko, the director of the center of Pedagogical Skills. International businesses prefer to hire people who speak more than one language. Students with both 9.(profession) backgrounds and a good command of Mandarin will be more competitive when 10. (apply) for jobs.
I didn’t understand the power of forgiveness until I caused a serious car crash.
It was a clear night, oven-warm, full moon hanging low over the desert. On the way back from a party, Hannah and I decided to go for a ________ . Hannah was my best friend, younger but much taller. “Hannah is a real ________ ,” My mom used to say. And ________ enough, that summer she ________ with a modeling agency(模特公司).
Taking a turn too fast, I ________ a block of rock and, ________ the car. We were seriously injured I cracked my cheekbone on the steering wheel; Hannah’s forehead was ________wide open on the dash. There is a(n) ________ amount of blood on Hannah’s ________ , a piece of skin hanging into her eyes. In the emergency room, my parents spoke _________; Best plastic, surgeon(整容医生)in the city. ________ of her modeling career.
What would I ________ to her? It is all my fault.
What her mother, Sharon, came into my hospital room, I started to cry, ready for her ________. She sat beside me and took my hand. “I nearly killed my best friend when I was your age, she said with a soft, ________ voice.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“You’re both ________,” she said. “The rest is window dressing. I ________ you. Hannah will too.”
Sharon’s forgiveness ________ Hannah and me to get back in the ________ together that summer. And we were able to ________ friends throughout high school, college and the rest of our lives. I think of Sharon’s gift of forgiveness every time I feel like ________ someone for his wrong doing.
1.A. holiday B. walk C. ride D. picnic
2.A. beauty B. friend C. angel D. hero
3.A. well B. surprisingly C. strangely D. sure
4.A. consulted B. dealt C. signed D. chatted
5.A. hit B. picked C. thrown D. missed
6.A. lost confidence in B. lost interest in C. lost sight of D. lost control of
7.A. pushed B. torn C. kept D. held
8.A. increasing B. small C. impossible D. limited
9.A. seat B. clothes C. arm D. face
10.A. quietly B. angrily C. loudly D. clearly
11.A. Burden B. Peak C. Basis D. End
12.A. hand B. say C. treat D. donate
13.A. judgment B. comments C. disappointment D. anger
14.A. deep B. weak C. comforting D. cheerful
15.A. lucky B. alive C. precious D. innocent
16.A. love B. understand C. forgive D. admire
17.A. allowed B. forced C. reminded D. required
18.A. party B. performance C. car D. hospital
19.A. win B. find C. make D. stay
20.A. apologizing to B. blaming C. shouting at D. threatening
The world’s African elephants are in serious danger. 1. And if we do nothing to put an end to the illegal ivory trade, elephants will be extinct from the wild within the next 20 years.
Many believe that an illegal hunter could get ivory without killing the elephant-this is not true. 2. And the rest lies beneath the surface like an iceberg(冰山)in water. The tusk is not just bone but rather it is alive, filled with nerves and blood vessels(血管)and when broken off, the tusks would likely become infected and lead to a slow and painful death.
However, there is a new form of hope rising from nature itself. African elephants are being born without the tusks that illegal hunters have targeted for decades. But why is the largest land mammal on earth now being born tuskless?3.
Is such change beneficial to elephants’ survival in the long term? As we know, elephant tusks ate not just glorious-looking. 4. Therefore scientists are just benspecies.to track the newly tuskless among them, to see how this unfortunate adaptation affects the species.
Ivory hunters are not the only danger faced by elephants today. And more support is needed than ever to create a safe world where elephants can live together with humans happily, tusks and all.5..
A. Action should be taken to protect animals in the world.
B. They also have important uses such as self- defense and digging.
C. Only two-thirds of an elephant’s tusks(象牙)stick out of their mouth.
D. It is estimated that one is killed every 15 minutes for their ivory tusks.
E. That’s because elephants without tusks have a better chance of surviving.
F. After centuries of being hunted by humans, many African elephants are tuskless.
G. And it’s in our power to make this happen by cutting demand and raising awareness.
Some people state they never forget a face. But what does that saying mean? Is there really no limit to the number of faces a person can remember?
A new study has found that, on average, people can remember as many as 5,000 faces. That number comes from a group of researchers at the University of York in England, There have been many studies recently on facial recognition. But the authors of this study say theirs is the first time that scientists have been able to put a number to the abilities of humans to recognize faces.
During the study, people spent one hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible, Then, they wrote down famous faces they know, such as actors, politicians and other public people. The results showed that the participants knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces, which is very shocking to the researchers. Rob Jenkins, coauthor of the study, said one explanation about it may be that some people have a natural ability for remembering faces. He also said it could be because of different social environments. Some people may have grown up in more populated places. So they may have had more social contact throughout their lives.
The ability to tell individual people apart is “clearly important.” In today’s modern world of big cities, televisions and social media, we meet thousands of people. Our facial recognition abilities help us to deal with the many different faces we see on the screens, as well as those we know.
The people in the study included 25 men and women. They are between 18 and 61 years old. “It would be interesting to see whether there is a peak age for the number of faces we know”, Jenkins said it is possible that we gather more faces throughout our lifetime. But, he added, there also may be an age at which we start to find it harder to remember all of those faces.
1.How is the study different from the previous ones?
A. It is the first study on facial recognition.
B. The study includes participants of all ages.
C. It lists the number of faces people can recognize.
D. Participants could only recognize faces from personal lives.
2.What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 3 refer to?
A. The difference of social environments.
B. People’s natural ability to learn.
C. The wide range of the numbers.
D. The necessity of facial recognition.
3.What will the researchers probably focus on after this study?
A. Why older people remember more faces.
B. When people can remember the most faces.
C. Whether people’s ability to remember faces is necessary.
D. How our ability to remember faces vary at different ages.
4.What can be a suitable title for the text?
A. Human Beings Never Forget a Face
B. Face Recognition Benefits Humans
C. The Key to Remembering More Faces
D. The Brain Remembers Thousands of Faces
Tom Macdonald would describe himself as pretty relaxed-unless he sees the doctor. Then, suddenly, his blood pressure(血压) rises.
“I was a truck driver, I would be under pressure all day, dealing with traffic and long journeys to make sure we were on time, ” said Tom. “But I never got worried with work. Yet medical settings made me very nervous. ”
This wasn’t a problem until ten years ago when Tom developed an umbilical hernia(脐疝). His doctor told him although not considered serious, if left untreated, a hernia can cause bad results. However. Tom’s situation created problems. “When I had my blood pressure taken in hospital, the doctor told me that I wouldn’t be able to have the surgery(手术)because it was so high. ”
Surgery for patients with high blood pressure can be risky. But when Tom’s blood pressure was later taken, the top number fell to below 140high, but not high enough to prevent surgery. “Soon afterwards, my doctor told me that I suffered from ‘ white coat syndrome(综合征)’.He explained it was seeing a doctor or being in a hospital that caused your blood pressure to rise even if it is usually normal. ”
“The main difficulty with white coat syndrome is that it only happens in a medical setting, which means you can’t really treat it,” says Professor Peter Sever, “You can’t send a patient away with medicine because once they get home and take it, their blood pressure is going to fall through the floor. ” The good news is that many people do gain control over the syndrome; knowledge can make a difference. “For some people, if they know they have it, they do seem to be able to take some control over it and it can improve,” says Professor Sever.
Many hospitals now have methods to solve the problem of white coat syndrome. They include the Will Adams NHS Treatment Centre in Gillingham, Kent, where Tom finally had his hernia repaired earlier this year.
1.What caused Tom to get worried?
A. Traffic jams. B. Long journeys.
C. Medical settings. D. Heavy work.
2.What prevented Tom having the surgery at first?
A. His white coat syndrome.
B. His doubt about his doctor.
C. The seriousness of his hernia.
D. The fall of his blood pressure.
3.What’s the best way to deal with “white coat syndrome”?
A. Taking some medicine.
B. Avoid going to hospitals.
C. Getting treatment at home.
D. Fully knowing the syndrome.
4.What can we know about the result of Tom’s treatment?
A. It’s creative. B. It’s satisfying.
C. It’s unexpected. D. It’s disappointing.
How far would you go to make a good impression at a new job? A college student in Alabama walked 32 kilometers in the dark to get to his new job.
The story begins with Walter Carr’s car breaking down the night before starting a new job at Bellhops, a furniture moving company. Carr was unable to find a taxi. So he decided to walk from his house to the job in Pelham 32 kilometers away. He left at midnight so that he could make it to the customer’s house by 8:00 am the next morning.
Pelham police saw him walking along a highway at 4:00 am. So, they stopped to see if the needed help. After hearing his story, they took him to a restaurant for breakfast and then to a church where he could safely wait until 8:00 am. The police then took Carr to the home of customer Jenny Lamey, Lamey said that even though Carr had just walked the entire night, he refused her offer to rest. He just wanted to start working.
Jenny Lamey later wrote this on Facebook: “I just can’t tell you how touched I was by Walter and his journey. He is hardworking and tough.” She then started a GoFundMe page to help Walter with money to get his car fixed.
Walter Carr’s story touched many others around the United States, Within a few days, people gave over $73, 000 to his GoFundMe page, When the CEO of Bellhops, Luke Marklin, learned of Carr’s story, he drove from Tennessee to Alabama to give Walter his own 2014 Ford Escape.
Carr has decided to give a part of the donations to the Birmingham Education Foundation. And he has received more offers for jobs and scholarships for schools.
1.What is probably the reason for Carr’s walking to his new job?
A. He had no money.
B. His car was stolen the night before.
C. He would like to take some exercise.
D. He considered the first day meaningful.
2.What did the police do to help Carr?
A. They took him to work immediately.
B. They went to his customer’s with him.
C. They called his customer to pick him up.
D. They gave him some money to buy breakfast.
3.Why did Jenny Lamey start a GoFundMe page?
A. To help Carr buy a new car.
B. To make Carr’s story popular.
C. To raise money to repair Carr’s car.
D. To express her admiration for Carr.
4.What did Carr decide to do with the donation?
A. To share it with some schools.
B. To spend it on further education.
C. To set up an educational institution.
D. To donate some of it to a foundation.