江苏省无锡市滨湖区2019-2020学年八年级下学期期中考试英语试题

    Do you use a smart phone every day? What do you usually do with your phone? Phones are very 1 in our daily life. However, they can lead to 2.

    It can be hard to stay focused (专注) these days. When working on your homework, you might sometimes find that your smart phone is distracting (使分心) you. 3, your smart phone can distract you while you are doing other things, such as having dinner, staying with friends and reading books.

    If you want to stay focused, an app called Forest can 4. You can download the app if you want to get off your phone and focus on more important things. When you set a new task in the app and set a certain amount of time to 5 it, a tree seed will be "planted" in the app. If you 6 doing your task, the seed will grow into a tree. But if you close your app and play with your phone 7 , the tree will stop growing and even die. Once you finish the task, your tree will be "planted" in the app. If you keep 8 ， you will have a forest some day! You can 9 your achievements (成就) with your friends and try to "plant" different kinds of trees.

    I already have a 10 forest in the app. Whenever I see my trees, I think about the efforts I have made to grow them. And I'm happy that I've learned to be focused

    Have you ever heard of Kobe Bryant? He used to be one of the most popular basketball players in the world in the US. He has a great number of fans around the world because he was really good at playing basketball. Many people are crazy about him. Sadly, he died in a helicopter (直升机) crash with his daughter Gigi on 26th, January 2020.

    Kobe once wrote a book "The Wizenard Series: Training Camping". The book is based on parts of Bryant's real-life experiences, especially when he played for the Los Angeles Lakers. Bryant said he didn't think he was going to be a writer during an interview. But that he often told stories to his daughters is one of the reasons why he wrote his own book. The book is about a youth basketball team and has five stories, with each focusing on the story of one character: Rain, Twig, Cash, Peno and Lab. All of the young kids on the team come from a poor neighborhood. No one thinks they can succeed. But things change after a new coach (教练) joins the team.

    During Bryant's life, he won many honors and he was the king of NBA. He had two different jersey numbers: 8 and 24 during his career. The number 24 means you need to work hard 24 hours a day to succeed. He was such a great player, as well as a very funny man. His good friend Michael Jordan said with tears, "When Kobe died, a part of my body died."

    Coming to the end of my assistantship(助手)in Barcelona, I start to think about the future.

    It is seven months and a few days since I arrived here and things have changed so much. When I first arrived in Terrassa, I was excited but I didn't know how to start a new adventure(冒险)in a strange country. I found the first few days seemed so long, trying to find a place to live, organizing my timetable with the schools, meeting new people. After a couple of weeks, the excitement started to disappear, however, and homesickness(思乡)started to set in. It wasn't a powerful homesickness but enough to make me spend more than a few nights thinking about family and friends back home, wondering if I should be there with them.

    All that started to change after meeting some new friends and spending good time with them, practicing languages, eating together and seeing new places as a group. I think that we should never forget how important it is to have good people in your life, because they can make such a difference.

    Coming back to Terrassa after visiting home for Christmas felt like returning to a second home. Things got even busier and more people came into my life; new friends, romance and a whole lot of good food flowed by in what seems to have been weeks, not months.

    Now, looking forward, there are some decisions to make. Should I return home to Scotland and move on with life there or try to extend(延长)my time here?

    To travel and visit other places is one of the most meaningful things you can do in life.

    Experiencing other cultures, learning about the world, it's such an important thing to do if you have the means.

    What I have learned from my experience so far is to travel and try new things whenever you get the chance. You may find somewhere you always want to be.