浙江省台州市2016-2017学年高二下学期英语期末考试试卷

    I was on a plane returning home to Dallas, Texas after completing my duty in Vietnam. There were no hometown parades for us veterans （退役老兵） from that1war and I had been warned about the unfriendliness from our countrymen at that time.2, I was just trying to get home without incident.

    I sat, in uniform, in a window seat,3eye contact with my fellow passengers. No one was sitting in the seat next to me, which4my loneliness. A little girl, not more than 10 years old, suddenly5 in the passage. She smiled and, without a word,6handed me a magazine. I accepted her7together with her quiet “welcome home”. I turned to the window and wept. Her small8of caring was the first I had9 in a long time.

    I believe in the10between strangers when we reach out to one another.

    Today, that young girl 11 has no memory of what happened years ago. I like to think of her as having grown up, continuing to12others and teaching her children to do the same. I know she might have been told to give me the “13” by her parents. It doesn't matter why she gave me the magazine. The 14thing is she did.

    From then on, I have followed her15 and tried, in different ways for 16people, to do the same for them. I know that my 17since then are all due to that little girl. Her offer of a magazine to a tired, scared and 18soldier has echoed throughout my 19. I have to believe that my small gestures have the same20 on others.

    It was dangerously cold. A few drivers slipping and sliding off the road and back on again had cut deep ruts（车辙）in the mud. And the ruts became frozen solid. The drum of our truck's aging engine worried us.

    Trees and bushes heavy with snow bent to form an icy tunnel. We inched along the scary route as Howard grasped the steering wheel（方向盘）tightly, trying to keep the truck in the ruts. We were now riding through a nightmare with no going back. I kept praying the truck would not quit.

    However, the engine's coughing grew worse. We came to a bumping stop. Hot tears ran down my face. We noticed a small house off in the distance. “I will go for help.” Howard's words ruined my common sense and panic took over. We would take the children — we would walk to that house together!

    But the snow was deep, and our two children, asleep in the cab, were too heavy to carry. My husband convinced me to let him go alone. If no one was home or they didn't answer the door, he would come back and we'd try to hike out to a main road. For now, it was safer in the truck. I wish I could say I have faith, but when he walked away, I was mad at the world.

    It seemed as if hours had passed before I heard a familiar voice and a kind laugh of another man as they approached in the snow. The older fellow invited us to go up to the house where his wife was waiting. Two wide-awake kids moved across the seat, ready for adventure. Their voices and laughter carried in the cold night air. When we finally got close, a cheerful woman opened the door. Warm air and the smell of hot buttered popcorn and chocolate drew us in.

     Relieved, my prayers were heard!

    This day marks the rising of a new food startup, the first company to be financed entirely by the crowd, and of it every business thus relies on thousands of customers to grow. Lisa, 25, its main founder and CEO, believes it will be a path that will become increasingly popular, and ultimately will produce more thriving（繁荣的）businesses from the scratch.

    “In the food industry, no venture capital (VC, 风险投资) will even look at you until you've hit a million in sales. As a fresh hand in business, unless you're independently wealthy, you will likely need to raise some money before then,” Lisa complained. So few businesses approached VC firms at the beginning. It was no exception with her. Thus, she turned to a new financing tool at hand, crowdfunding, to raise money from the crowd who'd like to take a bet on her company.

    But for a company, it didn't make sense to seek investments when all they had was an idea and a few months of consumer testing data. The food market is extremely competitive. No investor would put money behind a totally unproven new super food product founded by a bunch of twenty-somethings. “But we had a story. And crowds love stories.” Lisa said delightedly. So she put together an online crowdfunding campaign, explaining how she began working with this amazingly nutritious plant in the Peace Corps and then started selling it in the U.S. to support the poor in the West Africa.

    On the online platform where they were to raise the money, a friend convinced them to change their goal from $20,000 to $50,000. Lisa stayed up all night worrying they wouldn't hit it. But they reached $24,000 in 24 hours and ended their funding with $53,000. Seeing the number, Lisa said, “Thank you! To my crowd and for your belief!”

    Rapid advances in a new technology will soon transform science fiction into reality — meaning people will have driverless cars, small robots at their command and the ability to experience being in another place without leaving home, predicted Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the planet's largest cell phone trade show.

    Introduction of books available online, Internet translation of languages and voice recognition for computers all happened much faster than anyone could foresee and that technological research into even more previously unheard of advances is progressing at a fast speed.

    “People who predict that holograms（全息图）and self-driving cars will become reality soon are absolutely right,” Schmidt told thousands of attendees. Research under way will lead to situations where people can put themselves at events like a rock concert so that they can see, hear and even feel the event. And turn down the volume, if it's too loud.

    One attendee said she was scared that the possibility could be dehumanizing, but Schmidt replied by holding up his cell phone into the air. “It has an off button and it is here on the right,” Schmidt said. “My point is that it is all about your control. If you don't like my version of a rock concert, I'm not forcing you to go.” In the future, small robots could be used so busy people can send them to events for video and voice transmissions when their presence isn't required, Schmidt said.

    Technology in the near future will redefine the relationship among people in the world. “With technology comes power and with power comes choice, and smarter resourceful citizens are going to demand a better deal for their new life,” Schmidt said.

    Curiosity is an important characteristic of a genius. I don't think you can find an intellectual giant who is not a curious person. Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, they are all curious characters. Richard Feynman was especially known for his adventures which came from his curiosity. Here are four reasons:

    It makes your mind active and strong.

    Their minds are always active. Since the mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise, the mental exercise caused by curiosity makes your mind stronger and stronger.

    It makes your mind observant of new ideas.

    When you are curious about something, your mind expects new ideas related to it. When the ideas come they will soon be recognized. This is because your mind is not prepared to recognize them. Just think, how many great ideas may have lost due to lack of curiosity?

    By being curious you will be able to see something new that is normally not visible. They are hidden behind the surface of normal life, and it takes a curious mind to look beneath the surface and discover the unknown.

    It brings excitement into your life.

    The life of curious people is far from boring. It's neither dull nor routine. There are always new things that attract their attention and there are always new “toys” to play with.

A. So is curiosity that important?

B. But why is curiosity so important?

C. It leads you to a new and exciting life.

D. It opens up new worlds and possibilities.

E. Curious people always ask questions and search for answers.

F. Rather than get bored, curious people have an adventurous life.

G. Without curiosity, the ideas may pass right in front of you and yet you miss them.

    Itzhak Perlman, a famous violinist, came on stage to give a concert. He was stricken with polio（小儿麻痹症）as a child, so getting on stage is no small  (achieve).

    The audience sat quietly while he made his way across the stage  his chair and began his play. But this time, went wrong. Just as he finished the first part, one of the strings on his violin (break). We thought that he would have to stop the concert. But he didn't., he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

    (power) and pure, his performance attracted all the attention.

    Of course, anyone believes impossible to play a harmonious work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused  (know) that.

    When he finished, people rose and cheered.

     (smile), he wiped the sweat and said, “You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with you have left.”

活动目的 （走进中国诗词，感受传统文化……）

活动内容 （诗歌诵读、古诗词欣赏……）

活动体验 （……）

注意：

词数80左右；

可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

    With limited space for parks and gardens, architects and city planners often find it challenging to include greenery in neighborhoods in cities. One creative solution is to grow plants on unused areas like walls and rooftops. It's a popular idea, and now rooftop gardens and green walls have been sprouting up（大量冒出） in cities around the world.

    There are many benefits of having green spaces to the urban landscape. Adding gardens to rooftops or walls can create a pleasant environment — what was once a gray cement（水泥） wall can become a colorful, blooming garden. The CaxiaForum art gallery in Madrid, Spain, is a famous example — one of its walls is covered with 15,000 plants from over 250 different species. In other cities, green walls are being used more functionally, to cover up construction sites and empty buildings and to decorate the lobbies of office buildings.

    Using plants to cover walls and rooftops can also keep cities cooler in the summer. Buildings and roads absorb the sun's heat and hold it, causing a building or neighborhood to stay warmer longer. Plants, on the other hand, provide an enormous amount of shade. There is evidence that growing a roof or wall garden can lower a building's energy costs.

    In New York City, public schools plant rooftop gardens that can reduce heating and cooling costs. In addition to saving the school money, teachers and parents love the gardens because of their educational value — it's a fun and healthy way for their kids to investigate the world around them. “For the children, it's exciting when you grow something edible（可食用的）,” said Lauren Fontana, principal of a New York public school.

    Rooftop gardens and green walls may require a bit more effort to grow and maintain. However, hard work always brings rewards, and with green spaces, the rewards are plentiful.