浙江省名校协作体2023-2024学年高二上学期8月适应性考试英语试题

Four new books to read

The books that are included in this list can meet your reading needs at any time of year.

Nobody Will Tell You This but Me Bess Kalb

In this book, the author shares the advice her beloved grandmother Bobby left her. Bobby was a powerful woman who should never be underestimated, and she was very knowledgeable about the family's traditions and secrets. The book proves that family bonds can endure through generations and beyond death.

We Came Here to Shine Susie Orman Schnall

We Came Here to Shine focuses on the strong female friendship between an aspiring journalist and an unlucky actress at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Leaning on each other, these two ambitious women struggled against adversity at a time when women had little say.

A Star Is Bored Byron Lane

Favored by television star Jonathan Van Ness, this novel is partly based on the author's experiences as the former personal assistant to Carrie Fisher, a legendary American actress. The book follows Charlie Besson, the new assistant to the Hollywood icon, Kathi Kannon. Their three-year journey together is an unforgettable adventure that is funny, heartbreaking, and hopeful.

Fast Girls Elise Hooper

The story in Fast Girls took place during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Betty Robinson, Louise Stokes, and Helen Stephens overcame difficult pasts to attain Olympic glory as the world's fastest female athletes. Beyond the athletic journey, they also aimed to challenge the social standards of what females can achieve.

"Anyone knows single parents who can't afford to get their child's hair done for school? I will braid (编辫子) it for free!" Brittany Starks wrote on a Facebook post.

She decided to offer her hair braiding services after a family friend delivered backpacks full of school supplies, clothing and shoes for Cayden and Ceniyah in early August. "At the time, I didn't have anything for my kids to start school," said Starks, who is in between homes and staying with her mother. "It meant so much to me."

The unexpected gift made a big difference to Starks and her children, and it motivated her to pay it forward. Starks, who works two receptionist jobs, also braids hair part-time. "The hair-braiding process involves washing, blow-drying, and finally dividing the hair into small sections and braiding it. It also requires multiple supplies — including combs, brushes, hair jam and additional pieces of hair to weave in. It costs anywhere from $150 to $400 at a salon (美发厅), depending on the style," Stacks explained. "But it can last for months and is a huge timesaver in the mornings."

When she wrote the Facebook post, she assumed only a handful of people would reach out, but before she knew it, she had 35 appointments booked. Her Facebook inbox was suddenly full of messages from single parents, whose stories of hardship and financial challenges mirrored her own.

"There's a huge need for this. I could really relate to a lot of the women who reached out, and it made me realize that what I was doing was really important," said Stacks. "What got me the most was seeing the kids smile." Given that there was less than two weeks before the start of school, Starks knew she needed to enlist help.

Solar farms offer one way to meet the world's decarbonization (脱碳) targets, but they could also be used to deal with another of the planet's big problems: loss of biodiversity. The approach is starting to take off. Residents of Barnsdale, for example, will soon play host to a new solar farm lined with grass field of wildflowers and native grasses, which Banks Group, the developer, says will promote pollinating (授粉) insects.

The idea comes from the combination of two long-term trends: declining numbers of pollinating insects and the growing amount of land distributed to solar farms. According to the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona, more than 40 percent of insect pollinators globally are listed as "highly threatened"—an issue that could seriously threaten food security. Meanwhile, solar-energy competence has been increasing. Matthew O'Neal, a scientist at Iowa State University, would like to see more solar developers seize this opportunity.

The benefits of such projects don't stop at the insects. Research from Yale's Center for Business and the Environment indicates that pollinator-friendly solar farms can raise crop output on nearby farmland, increase the recharging of groundwater and reduce soil erosion ( 侵 蚀 ). In 2018, a US Department of Energy study found that if all existing and planned solar facilities near soybean and cranberry crops included pollinator home and increased output by just one percent, annual crop values could rise by US $1.75 million, US $4 million and US $233,000, respectively.

"Farmers could identify unprofitable areas, such as poor, highly erodible lands, as candidates for a pollinator-friendly solar farm. There's the potential to increase their net income with pollinator motivation projects," says O'Neal.

With enough forward thinking, these studies show, clean energy can provide new environmental opportunities. "We're at a turning point with energy production and we're seeing more opportunities to provide extra benefits that wouldn't have been considered with older methods of energy generation," says O'Neal. "You never heard of a coal mine planning pollinator conservation."

There is more of a connection between food and culture than you may think. On an individual level, we grow up eating the food of our culture. It becomes a part of who we are. Many associate food from our childhood with warm feelings and good memories and it ties us to our families, holding a special and personal value for us. Food from our family often becomes the comfort food we seek as adults in times of frustration and stress.

On a large scale, traditional food is an important part of culture. It also operates as an expression of culture identity. Immigrants bring it wherever they go, and it is a symbol of pride in their culture and means of coping with homesickness.

Many immigrants open their own restaurants and serve traditional dishes. However, the food does not remain exactly the same. Some materials needed to make traditional dishes may not be readily available, so the taste and flavor can be different from what they would prepare in their home countries. Additionally, immigrants do not only sell dishes to people from the same countries as them, but to people from different countries. Therefore, they have to make small changes in the original dishes to cater to a wider range of customers. Those changes can create new flavors that still keep the cultural significance of the dishes.

We should embrace our heritage (传统) through our traditional food but also become more informed about other cultures by trying their food. It is important to remember that each dish has a special place in the culture to which it belongs, and is special to those who prepare it. Food is a window into culture, and it should be treated as such.

I believe almost everyone would like two things from their jobs and careers: success and happiness. They want to do relatively well financially, receive fair recognition for their accomplishments, enjoy their work as much as one can, and become happier as a person as a result. So many people, especially ambitious, hard-working people, simplify them in a logical way: They first seek success and then assume that success will lead to happiness.. Chasing success has costs that can end up lowering happiness.

This is not to say that you have to choose between success and happiness.. But you have to reverse (颠倒) the order of operations: Instead of trying first to get success and hoping it leads to happiness, start by working on your happiness, which will enhance your success.

Whether you are an employee or employer, it is a better investment to increase happiness at work and in life, rather than simply trying to increase measures of success.

. No matter how much you enjoy your work, overwork will become an obstruction (阻碍) to well-being.

Once work quantity is under control, happiness at work requires a sense of meaning and purpose.. Earned success implies a sense of accomplishment and recognition for a job well done, while service to others requires knowledge of the real people who benefit from your work.

Ultimately, although success and happiness are linked, the magic mostly works one-way — and not in the way that most people think., and may lead you to unhappiness. But working on your happiness. gives you the best chance at getting both.

A. You can obtain both

B .But this reasoning is faulty

C. It's fairly reasonable to think this way, though

D. Working on your success to get happier is inefficient at best (充其量)

E. The first thing to remember is that happiness requires balance

F. It's dangerous to pursue success instead of happiness

G. The two key aspects of meaningful work are earned success and service to others

A video filmed and posted online by a blogger featuring a 96-year-old granny selling vegetable buns at midnight has gone viral in China. Loads of netizens have been touched by her amazing story and1 words.

The old hawker( 小 贩 ) from Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province has2 and sold late-night snacks for the past 30 years. Her daily routine sounds simple but3 : She runs the stall from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m, and then4 the market where she buys fresh ingredients before having a rest.

When asked why she spends so much energy5 a night business, the granny said she likes to keep herself busy and6 to do something worthwhile rather than spend her time7 . Her children have tried to persuade her to8 , but she refused, saying she finds9 in it.

The grandma said nothing is10 in the world, but she has no11 about how much she can make from her business. "When more people buy my products, I make more money, and when fewer people buy them, I make12 money. This is what business is all about," she said.

13  winning praise for being even more hardworking than many young people, the grandma said14 that young people are in the15 of their lives striving to achieve their goals, and elderly people should learn from them instead.

Emerging evidence in humans suggests a(typical) Western high-fat, high-sugar junk food diet can quickly weaken your brain's appetite control.

After offering volunteers a week-long binge (大吃大喝) of waffles, milkshakes and similarly rich foods, researchers in Australia found young and healthy ones scored worse on memory tests and experienced a(great) desire to eat junk food, even when they were already full.

The findings suggest something is special in the hippocampus (海马体)-a region of the brainsupports memory and helps to regulate appetite. When we are full, the hippocampus is thought to quieten down our memories of delicious food, thereby(reduce) our appetite. When it's interrupted, control can be seriously damaged. Over the years, extensive research on(mouse) has found the function of the hippocampus is very sensitive to junk food, but recently this has been observed only in young and healthy humans.

In 2017, after a week of Western-style breakfasts of(toast) sandwiches and milkshakes, researchers found participants performed worse on learning and memory tests which are typically dependentthe hippocampus.

Now, in this latest study the scientists of the team(find) that not only do such high-fat, high-sugar diets impair memory in humans, but they appear to directly affect our ability(control) our appetite.

（library card）。请给该图书馆的工作人员写一封电子邮件，询问相关信息。

内容包括： 1．可借阅图书范围；2.借阅制度及费用；3.办卡时间及地点。

注意：1.写作词数应为 80 左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

When my husband Randy died in late fall, deciding what to do with his garden was way down on the list of necessary tasks. During the first few months, I cried with our daughters, planned a memorial, cried with my family, celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving, and panicked over not having bought Christmas presents.

As the calendar turned to a new year, the often rainy days and long nights deepened my sorrow. I found myself exhausted at the end of February, both physically and mentally. Then the daffodils bloomed (开花) in the garden.

Years before, Randy had planted dozens of these lemon-yellow flowers. To him, they served as a reminder of hope, a promise that light and warmth would soon replace cold and dark. Looking at those dauffodils, I thought about how Randy had considered our garden a living work of art, carefully choosing plants so we'd see new blooms every month.

Then I noticed all the weeds that had taken root and spread everywhere. The neglect (疏于打理 ) showed, for Randy's illness had lasted a couple of years, a time when he didn't have energy for yard work the way he had before.

Faced with the neglected garden, I felt overwhelmed in the beginning. My daughters suggested I hire a service to clean everything up. I didn't respond.

Every time I sat in the garden alone, the memories of the lively garden came flooding, like the numerous scenes in an unforgettable film. Many days Randy came home from work, changed into old clothes, and headed out the door to mow or prune (修剪). Orange dragonflies followed him around the yard as he worked. Honeybees buzzed among the flowers, birds sang beautiful songs, and gentle breezes carried the sweet smell of dirt. No matter how cold or wet it was, the fresh air and physical activity made him energized and refreshed. For Randy, the work was quiet and comforting, which was a relief, as well as a pleasure.

注意：1. 续写词数应为 150 左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。