北京市朝阳区2021届高三上学期英语期末质量检测试题

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An Unexpected Gift

Twelve-year-old Mathew Flores is different from other kids. He loves junk (垃圾) mail, and these advertisements were the only reading materials 1 to him. Once he asked his mailman if he could offer him some.

The question 2 the mailman. He asked the boy the reason, and then recorded his 3 in his Facebook. "Today while delivering mail, I saw a boy reading ads, and he asked me for extra mail. Actually he wants to go to the library, but his family is very poor and can't 4 the bus."

The mailman then asked his Facebook friends if they could 5 some books for the boy. He wrote, "Most kids want electronic products! But what he wants is books. It's great to see his rare 6, and you may have seen him smile when I said I could help him!" "He is counting on me," he concluded. "So I am counting on you!"

The mailman thought the Facebook post might 7 50 to 60 books. But his 8 was passed on quickly. People from around the world, including the UK, Australia and India, have sent books. Hundreds of books have been delivered to the boy's door, with hundreds more 9 on their way.

When books first started arriving, Flores was shocked by what happened. "I thought they were 10, but they indeed were for me." He says that he can't wait to share the books with other kids, and has promised to read every one.

阅读下列短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写 1个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Imagine you are standing close to a river. The sun is shining and everything is very quiet. There is a boat  (wait) for you. You get in and it takes you down a river, slowly and gently… and after some time you realize that you  (be) in this place before. You are back at a time in your childhood,  you were very happy. You row to the bank of the river and get out. Walk around, and you will meet all those people you spent that happy time with and you can do all those things again that you enjoyed.

阅读下列短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写 1个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Young people work hard to get their qualifications. But many workplaces are looking for soft skills. They concern about things like managing your time, working in a team in different  (activity) and communicating with others. All of those  (include) in soft skills. Usually people with these skills can do a good job. Many of these skills are  (help) in your education as well. You can develop them by learning about the way you think and the way you communicate.

阅读下列短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写 1个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

World leaders are planning to return to the moon in the near future. Two companies have also made a decision  (support) space travel. They will give 30 million dollars to the first members who send a vehicle to the moon and send video back to Earth over the Internet. In addition to  (make) a lot of money, the winners will also make history. In the 1400s, Spanish leaders  (give) Columbus money to explore the world; in return, they learned about a whole new part of the world. Today's lunar explorers are similar. Who knows  they will discover?

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To: David Russel＜drusell@mmail.org＞ From: Alyssa Meller＜ameller@jtext.com＞ Date: January 12 Subject: Meetings

Dear Mr. Russel, Welcome to work here for a few days. I am writing to let you know that Roger Williams, one of our staff members, will pick you up at the airport on Sunday evening. We have a hotel arrangement for you just next to our office building. As a popular writer of children's literature, you will be giving a presentation in our boardroom. All of us are expecting the new contents in your books, which will surely include your understanding of children's literature. We hope to learn more from you about how to efficiently organize contents and develop written communication skills. At your request, I was about to arrange several meetings with your coauthors to discuss revisions to your series of children's stories, which will be an important part during your stay here. Because of the tight schedule, you will probably have some busy days here. But we will try our best to ensure that you can have a high efficiency. All details are provided below. Mon. 9:00 a.m. Presentation on new contents 11:00 a.m. Lunch meeting with Thomas Wood (illustrator) Tue. 9:30 a.m. Breakfast with Gary Willson (book designer) 11:20 a.m. Conference call with Scott West (the CEO of Walter Publishing) 2:00 p.m. Meeting with Hank Willis about some of the chapters Wed. 9:00 a.m. Meeting with Georg Hoffmann to translate some documents into English 11:00 a.m. Editing session with Jose Wright After the final meeting on Wednesday, we will drive you to West Town Station by 4:00 p.m. Your train from the station to the airport will depart at 4:30 p.m. and your flight is scheduled to leave at 6:10 p.m. If there is anything unsuitable for the arrangement, please let me know and we will adjust the schedule as soon as possible. Looking forward to meeting you next week. Alyssa

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The Wrestler Who Became an Author

Pete Watson looks like the biggest, sweetest teddy bear you ever saw. It is only when he opens his mouth that you notice his missing front teeth. He is a three-time world champion wrestler and now an author who has written several novels. However, what impresses people most is not his status as a champion or an author, but his unique understanding of wrestling.

Watson does not come from a traditional wrestling family. His father was an athletics director with a PhD, while his mother was a physical education teacher. He was a big boy, who was often bullied for his size. One day his neighbor had a go at him, and for the first time Watson realized that he could use his weight and size instead of feeling awkward about it. It was a turning point.

At college, he did a degree in communication studies. Meanwhile, he was learning the ropes of professional wrestling. His parents did not object to his learning to wrestle. They were just really insistent that he finished college. "I am pretty sure that they thought I'd get hurt and quit, but I didn't," he said. Watson insisted on the training and enjoyed every game. Once he said to his fans, "The process of the games is the most enjoyable thing for me. It's good to have a lot of cheers during the games. They encourage me to do it better."

Some fans asked him what he thought of wrestling, for they wanted to know if he had to be a good actor to become a good wrestler. Watson gave a definite answer. "I used to really dislike the acting label," he said. "But itisacting. When it's really good, when you're feeling it and letting that real emotion fly, it comes closer to being real."

Now Watson has retired and devoted the time to his family and books—his next novel is about boy wrestlers living on the same block. He does not think this life is so different from wrestling. "Wrestling is all about characters," he says. "So when my fans hear I've written a novel, I don't get the sense that they feel I've abandoned them."

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Photo Research

"If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of better stuff." Photographer Jim Richardson shared it with others. He spends a great deal of time doing photo research, looking for great locations to shoot.

Seeing a wonderful place is bread-and-butter photography—it's just part of the job. Getting there is only half of any great photograph's story. The other half is how the photographer prepares tocapturethe subject once in front of it. It is believed that groundwork is part of photography, as essential as knowing exposure and lighting or recognizing the decisive moment to take the shot. Research sounds like a boring task for many photographers, while for others digging into a subject in advance is part of the pleasure.

Philosophically, photographers seem to divide along that line. On one side are those who desire only to be in the moment. On the other side are the planners. They would never dream of going out the door without a full list of how they're going to approach the shoot. Actually, there is a third group nowadays. They just take photos of the whole scene and do all the creative work in Photoshop after the event. Most photographers do both: research carefully to prepare their schedule and then act in the moment once on site.

Photographers should do a lot of research in order to get ready for a photographic trip. This includes creating a file for each location they are due to visit. They start a file for each place and begin to make a list of the pieces of information. Knowing what the place looks like in advance is invaluable, so it is good to hit several Internet photo sites. Besides clueing them into the photographic possibilities of the location, this can also show what angles have already become overused and which they should therefore avoid. But photographers will also find angles they didn't expect from locations they hadn't imagined. Armed with these they will be better prepared to push the boundaries of what they expect.

"Above all, I'll look for places and events that are seasonal and timeless. I open my mind to what might make a great subject for a picture," Jim said. "Most travelers tend to think only of places they're visiting, without looking deeper into culture, history or meaning. I try to get in time with the rhythm of the place and in tune with its melody. But most of all I just want to be ready. If I'm ready, I can just about count on being lucky."

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Bright Nights, Big Problems

Astronomers rate the darkness of our skies on a range of 9 (brightest) to 1 (darkest), and most of us spend our lives in the light of levels 5 to 8. All over the globe our nights are growing brighter, and almost nowhere are they growing darker. Studies increasingly link our overuse of light at night with health concerns such as sleep disorders and diseases. Other studies report the damaging ecological consequences and the big waste of energy. But the steady loss of darkness from our lives is not easily measured, for the true value of darkness is something we are barely aware of.

Since the beginning of time, a sky with stars was part of the common human experience. Everywhere on Earth, on most nights, people came face to face with the universe. This experience influenced their beliefs—their very understanding of their place in the world. Today, many of us live under skies which are polluted by light. We live under a night sky showing much fewer stars. Although our night sky continues to shape us, it is the absence of the universe around us that influences our beliefs to create. We are being shaped by a less experience of darkness, and most of us don't even know what we are missing.

Our Milky Way galaxy is home to several hundred billion stars, and the universe home to several hundred billion other galaxies. A sky with a large number of stars encourages us to emphasize our importance, to imagine humanity as the center of all things. Face to face with the endless size of the universe, we have the chance to know how insignificant we really are. But we also realize the true largeness of our living on this planet, and realize that we have an enormous responsibility to care, that there is no other place to go, that home is here.

"Everyone needs beauty as well as bread," wrote John Muir, American naturalist. Lighting designers understand that without darkness, there is no "city of light", and they work constantly to create their city's atmospheric beauty by mixing artificial light with darkness. And with night's moonlit geographies, its smells of desert rain and autumn fires, its insect symphonies interrupted by a bird's call on a lake, natural darkness has many offerings of its own.

Yet we are completely involved in artificial light. Much of this lighting is wholly unnecessary, born of habit and lack of awareness. So let us become aware: simply by keeping our existing lights we could significantly reduce their negative effects on our body, our mind, our soul. Artificial light at night is a wonder, a quality that enriches our lives. But the same has always been true of darkness, and can be again.

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Farms of the Future

Skyscrapers(摩天大楼) are the ultimate symbol of urban life. By 2050, almost 80 percent of the earth's population could live in cities. The human population could increase to 9.1 billion people yet the amount of land available for farming will be the same.

Vertical farms, where farmers could grow crops in environmentally friendly skyscrapers, could be the solution. In spite of concerns over high costs, experts want to make these urban farms a reality and use these skyscrapers to grow crops.

Vertical farms would have many advantages, experts say. The food would be grown with minimal effects on the environment. Unlike traditional farming, vertical farming would not force animals out of their habitats by taking over large areas of land, nor would it pollute the air with the use of heavy farming equipment.  These have been well recognized.

Growing prosperity has led to many people demanding that all foods are available all year round. Indoor farming could produce crops constantly and crops would not suffer from weather-related problems like drought or flooding. In addition, the use of agricultural chemicals for controlling insects would be minimal.

 They point out that although crops growing in a tall glass building would get natural sunlight during the day, it wouldn't be enough. The plants closest to the windows would grow much more quickly than the plants further inside. The plants growing away from the windows may not produce as many or as high quality vegetables.  They would need additional light sources.

Experts agree that the new farming practices are needed to support the planet's need for more and more food at affordable costs, both to the farmer and to the consumer. Vertical farms may be a small-scale answer, but the best ideas could be yet to come.

A. Still, there are some people who are critical of vertical farms.

B. That is where vertical farms are often needed for year-round crops.

C. So how to meet the increasing food needs of our planet could be a big problem.

D. For these reasons, natural light cannot be a workable solution for vertical farms.

E. Vertically grown food is grown in environmentally controlled conditions in big cities.

F. Those farms would also reduce the cost and negative effects of transporting food over distances.

G. They believe that we can increase the food production by changing our thinking fromouttoup.

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Is Your Memory Online?

If you are trying to find out who invented the microscope, do you ask a friend, go to the library, or look it up online? These days, most people will look it up online with a quick Internet search. "Just Google it", people say, using the name of the popular Internet search engine. As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remembering less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.

In recent study, psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University conducted some experiments. She and her team wanted to know how the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.

In the second experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember. In addition, the researchers told them where to find the information on the computer. The information was in a specific computer folder. Surprisingly, people later remembered the folder location better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather they remember how to find it.

This is called "transactive memory". We remember where to find the information, but we don't remember the information. Before the Internet, we used transactive memory to remember which person or book had the information we needed. Now, we just have to remember where it is stored on the Internet.

According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, we are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that we are able to access it at a later date. This doesn't mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.

假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。因为疫情，你的外教Jim无法回国，写信向你询问寒假期间可以参加的活动。请给他回封邮件，内容包括：

1）推荐一项活动；

2）介绍活动内容；

3）提醒注意事。

注意：1）词数不少于80；

2）邮件的开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。

Dear Jim,

……

Yours,

Li Hua