广东省广州市越秀区广州市2023年中考二模英语试题

Kids are kids, no matter where they live. On fine spring days, you find them outside looking for games to play. It's the nature of being young. 

1 the game of marbles (弹珠) for example. From villages in deepest Africa to towns along the China Sea, youngsters have been playing a version of this traditional game for 2  years. 

There are many reasons 3  make the game of marbles so popular. It's easy to play and requires no equipment. Both the rich and the poor have 4  equal chance of winning. 5  you have at least one marble, you can get into a game. 

Perhaps most important of all, the rules are flexible. It means 6  the rules can be changed by the players. That's why there are no written rules for marbles. You and your friends 7  get a game going and, as long as you all agree, those are the rules for the game in your neighbourhood. 

However, the goal is always the same. Players put their marbles on the ground. They try to win their opponents' marbles by hitting the marbles or by knocking them out of a circle. 8  the end of a game, one player goes home with a bag full of marbles. 9  go home with bags that are far 10  than when they arrived. 

The first marbles were small round stones. Later, clay marbles 11  . Even later, marbles started being made from glass. The prettiest glass marbles are always the most valuable. Marble players often trade marbles, trying to get the most colourful and beautiful ones for 12 . 

Today, there is an International Marble Championship. 13  as any youngster knows, the best game of marbles 14  in the schoolyard. The days are warm, the marbles roll 15 , and friends gather around to see who will have the best luck that day. 

There was a businessman who was deep in debt (债务) and could see no way out. He sat on a park bench, head in his hands.

Suddenly, an old man stood before him. "I can see that something is 1 you," he said. After listening to the businessman's story, the old man wrote out a 2 , and put it in his hand, saying, "Take it and pay me back here exactly one year from today." Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The businessman saw in his hand a check for $500, 000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world!

"I can 3 my debts in a second!" he realized. But 4 , the businessman decided to put the check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the 5 to save his business, he thought.

He went back and worked hard to make his business 6 . Within several months, he was out of debt and making money once again. 

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the check. At the agreed-upon time, he saw the old man come with a nurse. The nurse spoke to the businessman and said that the old man was 7  ill and was always telling people that he was John D. Rockefeller. 

The businessman was 8  to hear this. All year long he'd been buying and selling, believing that he had half a million dollars behind him. Suddenly, he 9  that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that had helped him 10  anything he went after. 

There was a young prince who had a pet lion. The lion was his friend, but unfortunately, the lion was never let out of his cage. This made the lion feel sad because he thought that if he was considered a friend, then why was he not allowed out of the cage? 

Next to the lion's cage was a hyena. He hated the lion. One day, the hyena said to the lion, "if you are the friend of the prince, why does he keep you in a cage?"

The prince was about to answer, when the hyena cut him off and said, "The reason, Lion, is because of your big teeth." The prince laughed at this and said, "No, it's not because of his teeth!"

"Then it's because of your claws. They could kill the prince with one swipe!" the hyena said to the lion. The prince laughed again, "No, it's not because of his claws. I trust the lion will not hurt me. The reason he's in the cage is because I'm afraid that if I were to let him out, he'd see how wonderful it is to be free, and he would leave me. I couldn't stand that."

The hyena said, "Oh, but you're wrong, young prince! We love our cages. We'd never leave. Open my cage and I'll show you." The innocent young prince opened the cage and the hyena immediately jumped on the prince to eat him.

Suddenly, the lion jumped out of his cage and grabbed the hyena in his powerful claws. The hyena escaped and ran off, never to be seen again. 

The young prince was surprised and asked, "Lion, how did you get out?" The lion replied, "My prince, my cage was never locked. I have always stayed here because we are friends."

From that day on, the lion's cage door was taken off. 

Learning to play a musical instrument can be a bit tricky. For one thing, you have to have an instrument first in order to learn it. It can be a bit expensive. Besides, what if you find out that you don't really like the instrument after you start learning it?

Meng Qi, a 35-year-old Beijinger, is an electronic musician. He wasn't satisfied with the instruments that he saw on the market. His interest in musical experiments led him to design and build his own electronic instruments. 

His most well-known instrument is perhaps the Wing Pinger. It uses melody and noise to create special sounds that can't be made with regular instruments. 

"I build for myself first, mostly for experimenting with an instrumental idea. Then when I get bored with the instrument, I might sell it," he said. He added that his creations are not just musical instruments, but also represent his way of life and his idea of beauty.

Meng starts building his instruments on a computer. He uses Arduino, a software for electronic prototyping (原型设计), to design his creations. They look very different from regular musical instruments. They're made out of electronic parts that are connected together—kind of like how a computer is built. 

"First it can be a prototype in software, testing out ideas, as well as getting to know the range of the sound. Then it can be testing of the technical stuff, like the circuits to use. After that there will be selection of electronic parts till everything feels right. Then production can begin," he said.

However, it takes more than technical knowledge to design an electronic instrument. Meng's experience as a musician allows him to create instruments that are still playable and musical. 

"Playing a lot of instruments can help you both understand and feel the process of playing music," he said.

SEASON TICKETS (Aberdeen football club)

Season tickets for 2022/23 (August to May) are on sale now!

As a season ticket member at Pittodrie, you will enjoy access to home cinch Premiership matches along with the following benefits: 

·40 Priority Points. 

·Large savings on match-by-match pricing. 

·Reserved seats for home cup matches. 

·Special discounts and offers with our By Official Appointment (BOA) partners. 

·10 percent discount on official AFC supporter bus tickets to away matches. 

·10 percent discount for the AFC Club Shop: valid (有效期) season ticket must be presented to enjoy the discount. 

Season tickets are available at the following prices:

Adult £346. 00~ £456. 00

Over 65 £284. 00~ £ 336. 00

Over 75 £189. 00~£277. 00

Youth 18-21 £189. 00~£277. 00

Under 18 £85. 00~£216. 00

Under 12 £38. 00~£149. 00

·Prices change according to different seating areas.

In the Three-Body Problem books, Trisolarans, a type of alien, can dehydrate (脱水) their bodies. They can then ride out terrible environments and come back to life again hundreds of years later. Is it possible that humans could be like that as well?

Scientists have now made a new discovery by studying water bears. These microscopic organisms can live without water for decades, according to University of Tokyo biologist Takekazu Kunieda. 

When water bears find themselves somewhere without water, they go into a form called a tun. In this form, there are no signs of life, and they can survive pretty much anything. Deep freezing, volcanic fire, the dark space… these tiny water bears just sleep it off and wake up once it's safe again, said Science Alert. 

But how do these little eight-legged water bears live without water? Scientists may be onto the answer now. 

"It's thought that as water leaves a cell (细胞), some kind of protein must help the cell keep its strength to avoid breaking apart," said Kunieda. Now scientists have found proteins special to water bears. The proteins protect their cells against dehydration.

Scientists also put those proteins into human cells. They found these proteins can strengthen the human cell so that it won't become smaller in size when losing water, said Science Alert. 

With experiments using human cells showing successful results, Trisolarans might one day come to be a reality. 

If you walk through a park in the morning or in the evening, you might see a lot of people doing these slow and beautiful movements—Carry the tiger over the mountain and White crane spreads its wings.

Taichi is an ancient martial art. It is a common kind of exercise in China. More than 100 million people in over 150 countries practise Taichi at present. Recently UNESCO has added Taichi to its Intangible Cultural Heritage List (非物质文化遗产名录). "This will make Taichi more popular around the world. " said Chen Bin. He is a Taichi master from the village of Chenjiagou, Henan Province. This village is the birthplace of Chen-style Taichi.

 It can make us walk and move more freely, and it can also make us stronger. During slow movements, we can focus on our hands and feet. We can control them better. Slow movements also help us to take deep and long breaths. 

Taichi also focuses on the balance between yin and yang. It shows how the ancient Chinese people saw the world. The world is full of yin and yang: dark and light, soft and hard, female and male. But they don't go against each other completely. As we see in the picture, a white spot is in the black area and a black spot is in the white area. After a dark night, the sun will rise.  Everything keeps changing—that is how we should see the world. 

Taichi carries traditional Chinese philosophy, such as being in harmony with nature and using softness to beat hardness. It has become a symbol of Chinese culture. 

The world's famous palace, the 600-year-old Forbidden City, receives more than 17 million v every year. But if we were to travel back to the past, this huge palace would be a total mystery to us. 

At that time, all buildings in Beijing were low except the Forbidden City. It was guarded by high walls. After getting a look at the golden roof from the outside, common people could only imagine what it looked like inside. 

The Forbidden City which is in the heart of Beijing is one of the l palaces on Earth. It cmore than 720, 000 square metres and has 1, 050 buildings and more than 8, 700 rooms. It was b by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. After that, it served as the living and working place for fourteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty and ten emperors of the Qing Dynasty u the last emperor Pu Yi left in 1924. The palace saw the highs and lows of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as how Qing Dynasty finally came to an end in China. 

A special PE lesson    by a famous football player last week. 

He taught us    football well. 

Besides, he    us. 

We were interested in it we all listened very carefully. 

We learned that  very  us to practice more if we wanted to do something well. 

 the class was!

注意：1.字数：100词左右（短文的开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数）。2.不得透露学校、姓名等任何个人信息，否则不予评分。

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to have the opportunity to give a speech about how to be a green student. 

……

Thanks for listening!