北京市西城区2019-2020学年高二上学期英语期末考试试卷（含小段音频）

    Ekaterina is a famous skater. She1the activity of skating at the age of 4. Since then, she has been devoted to one career that drives her life and2beauty, and romance into lives of millions of others.

    When she was 11, she found a3partner, Sergei Grinkov, 15 years old then, with whom she could perform that activity in the most expressive, most elegant way. They were the most winning pair skaters on the ice in every way: The tiny fragile Ekaterina, in the4of her tall, strong, handsome partner, lovingly launched into the5, tenderly caught, and beautifully skated around the ice.

    Gradually, the two of them6together into a dream couple and the most beautiful kind of loving relationship. When she was 19, she married him. They had a daughter, a charming girl they both loved and protected. And then,7in 1995, during a routine practice session, her mate, her love, her partner, Sergei Grinkov, stopped, fell and died of a heart attack at 28.

    Ekaterina's world seemed to end. It was her mum who lit her8to start remaking her life by saying "Little Dasha, having lost a father, needs at least a healthy mother." This reminded her to ask a friend to send her9which had been left in the corner for a long time. Later she said in her book10is the only thing that can help people recover.'' In February 1996, Ekaterina skated a moving tribute (悼念) to Sergei, which she11to the music of Mahler's Symphony No.5, the couple's favorite. She was12at the beginning, because it had been a long time since she had skated alone. And she was afraid of the13the piece would recall. But that night, she did it. She filled up the14with her courage.

    No one who saw Ekaterina's that night would forget her performance, just as she would never forget Sergei. But everyone was already learning, as she already learned, that15“goodbye” was the beginning of her new life.

    Find your new favorite West End musicals, from heartwarming adaptations and award-winning scores to extremely funny musicals and must-see London shows.

    New Jersey Middle School Makes Students Go Phone-Free

    A middle school in Union County, New Jersey, is forcing its students to stay disconnected in class, by prohibiting cellphones. Maxson Middle School Principal Kevin Stansbury put forward the phone ban last week after he noticed some major issues in the school. "Our test scores were down, discipline was up," he says. According to him, students were too focused on their phones to pay attention to their lessons. So, he purchased Yondr pouches for the school.

    Yondr pouch

    When students come into class each morning, they place their phones in the pouch, which is then locked up tight. It can only be opened using a special device at the end of the day. The ban on mobile devices applies not just during class time but during breaks, with the only exceptions being in times of emergency or in cases of students who need such devices to help with disabilities.

    Eighth-graders who spoke with News 12 New Jersey say that they noticed a change in a matter of hours. "It's just better for everyone because you'll understand how it feels to get more work done instead of paying attention to the phone," says student Charlene V. "I'm usually listening to music, but today I got to communicate with all my friends," says student Desiree Duncan.

    The program was originally met with resistance from students and parents, so the process was not that smooth. But teachers and administrators say that the program will have a major impact. "Students were talking and laughing and there were no cellphones other than being carried in the pouches," Stansbury says.

    Teacher Nia Cummings says she even noticed students bouncing ideas off each other in class. She says students used to give up quickly and just look for answers on their phones. She says they now try to figure it out themselves. "Everyone is socializing and eating lunch together. That's what I wasn't seeing enough of when phone usage was at its worst," she adds.

    Maxson Middle School is currently the only one in the district to use these pouches. Kevin Stansbury also called on all the schools in the community that it's worth paying close attention to cellphone issues at secondary schools and taking actions when necessary.

    Living alone in nature is the kind of decision that looks great on paper. You could move away from the pressures of city life, to somewhere with a lower cost of living and more privacy. You could enjoy scenic views all year round, and adopt a simpler way of life. It's not hard to see the appeal of this at all. But what happens when that all goes wrong?

Paul Kingsnorth is a distinguished writer—his novel The Wake was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Gordon Burn Prize. His books help develop an awareness of place and history, so it's not hugely surprising that his latest book, Savage Gods, is about his own rural existence. Savage Gods is in part about Kingsnorth, his wife, and their children moving to western Ireland. He writes, "In my country a small house and a field is beyond the means of anyone who doesn't earn much money or who refuses to get into debt to chase a dream." It's a feeling that anyone who's looked longingly at rural tiny houses miles from anyone else can relate to.

    But Kingsnorth is aware that this is only part of the story. "Because I am not a real farmer, I have to make my money in other places," he writes, "I need the Internet or the Dublin-to-Holyhead ferry and sometimes both to put food on my family's table." To make matters worse, Kingsnorth's isolation(隔离) results in a crisis of confidence in his own writing abilities—which becomes one of the central themes of Savage Gods.

    Kingsnorth isn't the only writer to make time spent in a vivid countryside landscape sound less enjoyable than one might expect. The French writer Sylvain Tesson takes this to what may be its most extreme point in his book. He lived alone for six months. His book includes impressive descriptions of the landscape and what it's like to experience depression in the middle of such a landscape.

    Some books neatly remind you of the appeal of such an existence, while others make the drawbacks central to their accounts. In Names for the Sea, Moss summarizes the attraction of wilder places. "We'd come for the landscape, for the pale nights and dark shores, rain sweeping over trees and bushes," she writes. From that, it's not hard to see why a life in nature—even with its potential downsides—still appeals to so many.

    Elon Musk, perhaps the world's most famous businessman, has a habit of making statements that stretch the bounds of believability.

    On July 16^th, 2019, he introduced a new type of brain-machine interface (BMI), starting from the design of a "neural lace (神经织网)", a net of thin electrodes (电极) that capture the information from the brain. However, the electrodes must be flexible, so that they do not damage brain tissue and will last for a long time. And to make the implantation (植入) of so many electrodes safe, painless and effective, the process has to be automated.

    Mr. Musk's team does indeed seem to have made progress towards these goals. Its presentation included videos of a robot that is best described as a sewing machine. This robot grabs "threads", and shoots them deep into the brain through a hole. The firm has also designed a chip that can handle signals from as many as 3,072 electrodes.

    With all these technological breakthroughs, the firm now hopes to help people overcome such illnesses as blindness and paralysis. They designed a small device that would sit behind someone's ear, picking up signals from the implanted chip and passing them on as appropriate. In a few years, using a brain implant to control your devices may be as prevalent as wearing wireless earphones today. Finally, Musk predicts neural lace will allow humans to be combined with AI systems, thus enabling the species to survive.

    Though, as this announcement shows, Mr. Musk does have a habit of presenting himself as the hero of the human race, the idea that some machines at least will come under the direct control of human brains seems possible to be carried out. The biggest barrier to this happening will probably not be writing the software needed to interpret brainwaves, but rather persuading people that the necessary surgery, whether by sewing machine or otherwise, is actually a good idea.

    What's the one thing that the world's leading innovators (创新者) share with children? They both learn through asking questions. It's the simplest and most effective way of learning.

    Not asking good or even enough questions has a direct impact on the quality of choices we make. Getting into the habit of asking questions helps us gain deep insight and develop more innovative solutions.

    Brilliant thinkers and scientists never stop asking questions. "Asking questions is the single most important habit for innovative thinkers," says Paul Sloane, the UK's top leadership speaker on innovation.

    Newton: "Why does an apple fall from a tree but, why does the moon not fall into the Earth?"

    Darwin: "Why do the Galapagos Islands have so many species not found elsewhere?"

    Einstein: "What would the universe look like if I rode through it on a beam of light?"

    Asking these kinds of basic questions started the process that led to their great breakthroughs. And asking questions is as relevant today. Only by constantly asking why can you find better products. Yet somehow, we just don't value questioning as much as we should as we get older. In his book "A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas", Warren Berger used the example of Edwin H. Land, who invented the Polaroid camera in response to his 3-year-old daughter asking why the camera that they used couldn't produce a photo immediately. There are plenty of other cases: Airbnb exists as a response to the question "why should you be stuck without a bed if I've got an extra air mattress (床垫)?" The list is endless, as many companies and even entire industries can be traced back to a single question.

    How do we master the art and science of asking effective questions and how do we make it a habit? Here are some suggestions:

    ⒈Create an environment where curiosity is welcomed and rewarded.

    ⒉Become a keen observer of everything you see, hear and experience.

    ⒊Look at the world with fresh eyes question the familiar, and assume nothing is obvious.

    ⒋Understand the power of different types of questions—how they should be used and when.

    ⒌Keep asking why till you can go no further.

Asking questions can help us learn, explore the unknown, and adapt to change. Do as listed above and start your journey of practicing effective questioning. Now, are you ready to ask your questions?

1）欢迎他来中国；

2）推荐一款手机app；

3）推荐的理由。

注意： 1）词数不少于50；

2）开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。

Dear Jim,

Yours,

Li Hua