重庆市初中2023年英语中考模拟试卷（音频暂未更新）

—Sure. It's about ten minutes' walk.             

—If they                   free, they will be pleased to come.

—Laughing can make us                  .

—No worries. It is said that a new road                    very soon.

One day, an electricity (电力) generator (发电机) broke down. The electric lights went out all over the city.

Machines1, computers failed, fridges no longer worked, and frozen foods went2. There was no radio and no television. The situation was very3. As a result, the loss of power was costing the electricity company tens of thousands of dollars. It was costing industry and business in the town many more thousands of dollars.

Engineers worked for hours without a stop trying to get the generator to start again, but nothing4.

The generator had a mistake that no one understood. Hopelessly, the manager of the electric company invited a world-famous expert on generators. A few hours5, he flew into town. He drove to the6station and walked around the generator. He looked at it carefully and then took a smallhammer(锤子) out of his pocket and hit a part of the generator with it. Rapidly the generator started working again to the manager of the electric company.

The expert gave his7to the manager of the electric company. It said: "For restarting one generator:  5, 000." The manager was very8. "Five thousand dollars!" he shouted. "For hitting the generator with a   hammer! It's too much money! I won't pay for it!"The expert took the bill back and9it slightly. Now it said: "For hitting one generator: $1. for knowing10to hit: 4,999."

Dr. Nate Lewis patiently adds a chemical to a machine in his laboratory. The chemical smells a little bit like rotten (变质的) fish. We know that because we have our noses to smell and know it. Dr. Lewis, however, wonders if his machine can smell the chemical, too. The machine is actually an electronic nose.

You might wonder why anyone would want to build an electronic nose. After all, if you want to smell something, you can just breathe in through your own nose. For example, it's common for someone to smell a bottle of milk to check if it has gone bad. But imagine if a person had to smell the thousands of bottles of milk that farms produce every day-all that milk would go bad long before the testing was done! The food industry uses electronic noses every day to test the foods for freshness.

There are millions of different smells in the world. How can our nose tell the difference between all these smells? Scientists know there are cells in our noses that act as smell detectors (探测器). They think that a certain    pattern of cells respond (回应) to every smell. Our nose creates a fingerprint for each smell using this pattern. Our brain understands all the odor (气味) fingerprints, Dr. Lewis's electronic nose works like the human nose to detect odor fingerprints.

The biggest difference, however, between human noses and the electronic noses that have been built so far is    the brain. We need our brains to explain each smell we meet. But the electronic nose can only identify the chemical makeup of a smell while our brain can decide whether something your nose smells is good or bad. "It doesn't know which smells it likes and which is terrible because it can't think." explains Dr. Lewis.

Dr. Lewis is working on how to make the electronic nose get smarter. Maybe someday fridges with electronic noses will tell you when food has gone bad, or your locker room will use them to remind you to wash your sports   clothes. There are many possible uses for a machine to take the place of the human nose. Every day scientists are getting closer to building a more perfect electronic nose.

Thousands of years ago, Chinese poet Qu Yuan wrote the poem Tianwen, meaning Quest for Heavenly Truth. He came up with a series of questions about the sky, stars, nature and the world around us. The poem showed his spirit of finding the truth.

Inspired (激励) by the great poet, China named its latest series of planetary exploration missions (行星探测任 务) after the poem in 2020. The first one in the series—a Mars exploration mission—has been named Tianwen 1, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said on April 24, 2020, China's Space Day. This shows China's wish to explore the universe (宇宙) .

China has made great progress in space exploration. In 1970, China sent its first man-made Earth satellite (卫星), becoming the fifth country in the world to send a man-made satellite independently. Since 2003, China has carried out six Shenzhou manned missions. China's moon exploration missions—the Chang'e series—started in   2007. In December 2018, China became the first country to send the probe (探测器) Chang'e 4 to the moon's far side.

The Tianwen series will follow the Shenzhou and Chang'e series and move further into space. The first step is to send a Mars probe, which means the start of China's exploration of the red planet. The probe is planned to circle around, land on and explore Mars in one mission. It is the first to finish all of these tasks in one mission. The Long March 5 rocket has sent the probe to Mars.

After this mission, China plans to visit Mars again in 2028, aiming to collect soil from the ground of the planetand bring it to Earth. Around 2030, China will explore Jupiter and several small planets.

Ben, who was an excellent student at school, studied very hard. He got on well with all of his classmates and they all liked him so much. Unluckily, the poor boy's father passed away because of a terrible accident two years ago, leaving Ben and his mother. Last Sunday afternoon, he went home from his school without saying anything.

There would be a class meeting the next day. It was a rule that all the parents had to attend it . However, Ben didn't want his mother to go to the meeting because she was a deaf-mute (聋哑人). With such a deaf-mute mother, he was afraid that other students and their parents would laugh at him. It was just what he could not stand.

Seeing her son getting home, the mother made a gesture (手势) of "I love you" as usual. Ben usually gave back a kiss to her in the past, but this time he didn't say anything and went into his own room. Ben went for the table but he ate nothing with his head down. Her mother asked what on earth had happened to him. "Nothing serious. I just feel uncomfortable in my heart, Mum."

The next day, forty-nine parents went into the classroom and sat on their children's seats. Only Ben's seat wasempty. Ben was gloomy (忧郁的) on the seat. Suddenly, "please show your mother to your seat, Ben" the head teacher said. Ben's mother made a gesture of "I'm sorry I'm late" to others. "Please explain your mother's words to us, Ben" the head teacher said. So all the parents knew she was a deaf-mute. Then they all stood up from the seats and smiled to her in a friendly way.

Ben came to his mother and asked impolitely, "Why do you come here, Mum?"

"Only because I love you," the mother made a gesture and her face turned red like a shy girl.

①Anger（生气） often makes us uncomfortable. Seeing your child's anger can be especially uncomfortable.

In order to reduce this feeling, parents will often encourage children to "stop crying" and say things like "It's nothing to cry about." It's moments like these that plant the seeds（种子） of unhealthy anger. If a child never sees his or her parent express anger, he or she should never express anger, either. But if a parent always expresses their anger loudly, the child may think of anger as something that he is always afraid of. So we should learn how to

create healthier anger in our kids.

②The first thing you can do to create healthier anger in your children is to practice creating healthier anger inyourself. Once you're better at experiencing anger and expressing it in a healthy way, you'll be able to set a good example for your kids.

③Stopping kids from expressing their feelings is wrong. You may feel bad when you believe you are wrong.When children express their feelings and are told that it's nothing to cry about, they come to know that they themselves are bad.

④We need to raise them in an environment where it's safe to express feelings. Once you feel more comfortable with your own anger, you can teach your children why anger is a helpful feeling. When your kid expresses anger, help them find out what it is that has made them angry. Why did it make them angry? How did it do that? Then, you can teach them that those feelings are never wrong and our expressions of our feelings are in ourcontrol.

Anger is natural and common, and it can be experienced and expressed in a healthy way.

In a modern world where time is money, how have our reading habits been influenced? Are we reading more quickly or do we prefer to read short passages? The answer perhaps lies in the kind of text you're reading.

When we're reading online, we read quickly to search what we want. Does this mean that as readers we now have far less patience than we used to? Not necessarily. Much of this activity is actually skimming or scanning to check whether something is useful or interesting and whether we want to read on. We'll slow down and take a bit longer to properly read the text if the headline catches our eyes.

For those writing for an online environment, this means finding more useful ways of catching the readers'eyes. For example, putting the key information at the very beginning makes it more likely that the time-poor website visitors will find what they want.

But what about when we're reading literature, are the rules still the same? The average reader works their way through a piece of an article at no more than about 250—300 words per minute, which is generally a page of text. If you try to read through a novel more quickly, then you start to lose a lot of what makes literature such a pleasure.

When we read for pleasure, we are much less focused on picking out useful information or key words. Instead, the language itself is as important as the information mentioned. The longer you spend reading a passage, the more vivid a picture you create in your mind.

Sometimes an escape from the fast-moving Internet Age is just what we need, so maybe it's time to slow down and lose yourself in a good book.

A: Hey, Jane. Have you ever heard of China Brand Day?

B: What's the Day for?

A: In the past, "made in China" just made people think of cheap, low-quality products.

B: I agree, Chinese brands are going global and being widely accepted.

A: Exactly.

B: Yes. I often buy some shoes and clothes of these brands. They are at good prices, but really nice and of high quality.

A: Cool!

The story of translator Jin Xiaoyu has touched millions of readers. It first came out in January in Hangzhou

Daily, a newspaper in Zhejiang.

The story is about the life of 50-year-old Jin Xiaoyu and his fight against a mental (精神) illness. Jin has beenblind in one eye after an accident and had bipolar disorder (躁狂抑郁性精神病) at a young age.

In 2010, Jin Xiaoyu started translating foreign books. Over the years, he has translated 22 books. More than 10of them have come out.

For Jin Xiaoyu, translation gives him the power (力量) to fight with the illness and live on. He loves it somuch that he always works till very late in the evening.

Jin Xiaoyu's mother died last year. Now Jin Xiaoyu lives with his 85-year old father Jin Xingyong in their oldhouse, translating day after day with his old computer.

"This is really a sad story, but it is also filled with love. Xiaoyu's parents' love makes him believe that there isalways hope for life and he can become successful in translation," one reader said.

After the story came out, Jin Xingyong began to receive phone calls offering help. Some readers have offeredto renovate (翻新) their old house, buy Jin Xiaoyu a new computer and make donations (捐赠). Jin Xingyong turned down all the kind help. "Xiaoyu has returned home from the hospital and is now working on translating another German book," Jin Xingyong said while expressing thanks for all the attention.

Neither the teacher nor the students will   the chance.

Tom isn't  friendly  his sister.

This month, I'll  go out for travelling  stay at home for reading.

Suddenly Li Ji came in and said he had   to tell the class.

  the night is, the daylight will come in the end.

A new guideline (指导方针) introduced by central authorities (中央政府) on July 24, 2021 has helped many children enjoy more free time before. The guideline calls for reducing(减少) homework, improving the quality of education and regulating (规范) after-class activities, Xinhua reported.

According to the guideline, children below the third grade will not have homework. It should take no more than ninety for junior high school students to finish their homework every day.

More than three quarters of children in Chinese cities Grade 1 to 12 are taking private tutoring courses (私人辅导课程), Global Times reported.

"Parents are that if their children start behind, they will stay behind. Some training schools have taken advantage of (利用) parents' worries to money," said Chen Xianzhe, a professor at South China

Normal University. "The guideline is meant to calm (安抚) the worries of parents and society as a whole."

"But this does not mean the tutoring courses will completely disappear, since there are exams," said Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences. One-on-one or one-on-two tutoring might see a rise.

"Schools improve their education quality; take the main responsibility for students' education and not push them into tutoring courses," Chu added.

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As we know, water is very important to man,

I believe if everyone makes a little effort, we can make a big difference.