All eyes were on Jack Ma. The chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd stepped down on Teachers’ Day from leading the e-commerce giant he founded 20 years ago.
“I still have lots of dreams to go after,” Ma wrote in an open letter last year to announce his parting. “The world is big, and I am still young, so I want to try new things.”
The 55-year-old businessman showed that he was ready for new things by arriving at his farewell party dressed up like a rock star.
In fact, his rags-to-riches story is a good example of doing something different. Visiting the United States in 1995, Ma saw the internet and had the idea of setting up his own trading website. In 1999, he founded Alibaba with a group of friends in a shared apartment, struggling for years to get it off the ground. With all the challenges, the company slowly brought e-commerce to China.
Although his success has inspired a number of Chinese tech businessmen, Ma pointed out that the key is having a dream. “It’s the dreams that keep us never afraid of setbacks,” Ma said in a video posted on Sept 9. Now the experienced businessman is looking to focus on education. What can he offer? “I’m not gonna teach English; I’m not gonna teach business. But I’m gonna teach young people how to face challenges,” he told Bloomberg News. Skilled sailors were never made on calm waters.
As Ma said, “Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueler. But the day after tomorrow is beautiful.”
1.Why did Jack Ma attract all the attention on Teachers’ Day in 2019？
A.He led the Alibaba Group to celebrate the Teachers’ Day.
B.He would become the former chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
C.He and a group of friends founded Alibaba Group 20 years ago.
D.He gave a special show dressed up like a rock star.
2.What will Jack Ma do after his parting from Alibaba？
A.He will be an English teacher.
B.He will be a rock star.
C.He will continue to be a businessman.
D.He will try something new related to education.
3.Which statement about Jack Ma is NOT true according to the passage？
A.Ma’s success lies in pursuing his dream and making great effort.
B.Jack Ma was worried about the future of education in China.
C.Jack Ma always wants to challenge himself in new fields.
D.Jack Ma would like to encourage young people to overcome difficulties.
Directions: Write an English composition in 120-150 words according to the instructions given below in Chinese.
文华中学的读书节即将展开，学校将给每个班级配发图书（按下图显示的比例），放置在班级中，总量为 20 本。现在学校向学生们征求意见，假设你是该学校的学生李华， 请你给学校写封邮件，描述提供的图书类型并谈谈你的意见与建议。（学科辅导类： test-prep books）
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Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets.
1.何不喝杯咖啡提一下神？（Why）
2.随着每年元旦的临近，人们常常会反思这一年的得与失。（reflect）
3.几个月前举行的展览如同一扇窗，从这里，世界能看到这个国家古老的文明从哪里来，向何处去。（which）
4.登山运动的吸引力不仅在于运动员之间的激烈竞争，还体现在运动员与自然环境的抗争中。（Not only...）
Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
How Supermarkets Are Changing Britain
The British love their supermarkets. And there are more and more of them every year. But is this a good thing?
Not necessarily. For a start, many small shops can’t compete on price with superstores such as Tesco. And they don’t have as many products either. As a result, 36% of the UK’s small shops shut down between 1990 and 1996 while the number of supermarkets increased from 457 to 1,102. Supermarkets have even had a negative effect on the British pub. Beer and wine is much cheaper in a supermarket than in a pub. There are now over 55,000 supermarkets in the UK, but less than 55,000 pubs. A decade ago there were more than 61,000. These days, pubs are closing at the rate of 39 a week!
Supermarkets are also bad for animal welfare. The UK has high standards in this field, but some supermarkets get their meat from abroad. And in many cases, this meat is produced under conditions that would be illegal in the UK. But once they’ve got the meat, supermarkets put a British flag on the product as the meat is packed there. Dishonest? Not exactly, but it isn’t entirely true either!
Supermarkets have a poor environmental record too. Many of them don’t store food products themselves as storage space is expensive, so they get food producers to do it for them. This means that supermarket lorries have to make more trips to collect supplies. In turn, this increases the amount of petrol used, which leads to more pollution. Supermarkets also use a lot of plastic packaging, which isn’t good for the environment either.
So, what can be done to help the “little guys”? Not much really. Supermarkets have a lot of power. Many political parties receive donations from supermarkets. And supermarkets often use their money to influence decisions. For example, just before the year 2000, one supermarket gave the government £12 million to help build the Millennium Dome in London. Later, plans to tax supermarket car parks were dropped.
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
The Ban on Trading Ivory(象牙) is Unfair but Necessary
As in some countries elephant population have recovered, there are competing proposals about how absolute the ban on elephant trading should be. Countries seeking a modest relaxation have a strong case to make. But it is not strong enough. The ban must stay.
Understandably, countries that have done a good job protecting their elephants feel this is unfair. 1. And the real burden of all this is borne by poor local people who are in competition with wildlife for resources, and sometimes in conflict with it—elephants can be destructive. People and governments, so the argument goes, need to have an economic stake(利害关系) in the elephants’ survival. The ivory trade would give them one.
To understand why these reasonable-sounding proposals should be rejected, consider what
has happened to elephant numbers since some legal trade was authorised, when Botswana, Namibia and South Africa were allowed in 2007 to sell a fixed amount of ivory to Japan. 2.
A survey conducted in 2014-15 estimated that elephant numbers had fallen by 30% across 18 countries since 2007.
3. In better-resourced national parks, drones are used to make it easier for park keepers to spot illegal hunters. DNA testing of ivory can identify where they came from, and thus whether they are legal. As prices of the technologies fall and countries get richer, both technologies are likely to spread.
The objection to trade in products of endangered species is not moral. When the world is confident that it will boost elephant numbers rather than wipe them out, the ivory trade should be encouraged. 4. And until it does, the best hope for the elephant—and even more endangered species, such as rhinos(犀牛)—lies not in easing the ban on trading their products, but in enforcing it better.
A. Regrettably, that point has not yet come.
B. Elephant numbers started falling.
C. The existence of even a small legal market increases the opportunities for illegal trade.
D. They point out that they have devoted huge resources to the elephant.
E. In the long run technology can help make trade coexist with conservation.
F. One animal, as so often in the past, will attract much of the attention: the African elephant.
Each year, backed up by a growing anti-consumerist movement, people are using the holiday season to call on us all to shop less.
Driven by concerns about resource exhaustion, over recent years environmentalists have increasingly turned their sights on our “consumer culture”. Groups such as The Story of Stuff and Buy Nothing New Day are growing as a movement that increasingly blames all our ills on our desire to shop.
We clearly have a growing resource problem. The produces we make, buy, and use are often linked to the destruction of our waterways, biodiversity, climate and the land on which millions of people live. But to blame these issues on Christmas shoppers is misguided, and puts us in the old trap of blaming individuals for what is a systematic problem.
While we complain about environmental destruction over Christmas, environmentalists often forget what the holiday season actually means for many people. For most, Christmas isn’t an add-on to an already heavy shopping year. In fact, it is likely the only time of year many have the opportunity to spend on friends and family, or even just to buy the necessities needed for modern life.
This is particularly, true for Boxing Day, often the target of the strongest derision(嘲弄) by anti-consumerists. While we may laugh at the queues in front of the shops, for many, those sales provide the one chance to buy items they’ve needed all year. As Leigh Phillips argues, “this is one of the few times of the year that people can even hope to afford such ‘luxuries’, the Christmas presents their kids are asking for, or just an appliance that works.”
Indeed, the richest 7% of people are responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. This becomes particularly harmful when you take into account that those shopping on Boxing Day are only a small part of our consumption “problem” anyway. Why are environmentalists attacking these individuals, while ignoring such people as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has his own￡1.5bn yacht with a missile defence system?
Anyway, anti-consumerism has become a movement of wealthy people talking down to the working class about their life choices, while ignoring the real cause of our environmental problems. It is no wonder one is changing their behaviours—or that environmental destruction continues without any reduction in intensity.
1.It is indicated in the 1st paragraph that during the holiday season, many consumers .
A.ignore resource problems
B.are fascinated with presents
C.are encouraged to spend less
D.show great interest in the movement.
2.It can be inferred from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the environmentalist movement .
A.has targeted the wrong persons
B.has achieved its intended purposes
C.has taken environment-friendly measures
D.has benefited both consumers and producers
3.The example of Roman Abramovich is used to show environmentalists’ .
A.madness about life choices
B.discontent with rich lifestyle
C.ignorance about the real cause
D.disrespect for holiday shoppers
4.It can be concluded from the text that telling people not to shop at Christmas is .
A.anything less than a responsibility B.nothing more than a bias
C.indicative of environmental awareness D.unacceptable to ordinary people
