天津市静海区重点中学2023-2024学年高三上学期12月学生学业能力调研考试英语试题

A Race Against Death

It was a cold January in 1925 in Nome, Alaska. The town was cut off from the rest of the world due to heavy snow.

On the 20th of that month, Dr. Welch 1  a sick boy, Billy, and knew he had diphtheria, a deadly infectious(传染的) disease mainly affecting children. The children of Nome would be 2  if it struck the town. Dr. Welch needed medicine as soon as possible to stop other kids from getting sick. 3 , the closest supply was over 1,000 miles away, in Anchorage.

How could the medicine get to Nome? The town's 4 was already full of ice, so it couldn't come by ship. Cars and horses couldn't travel on the 5 roads. Jet airplanes and big trucks didn't exist yet.

6 January 26, Billy and three other children had died. Twenty more were 7 . Nome's town officials came up with a(n) 8 . They would have the medicine sent by 9 from Anchorage to Nenana. From there, dogsled(狗拉雪橇)drivers—known as "mushers"—would 10 it to Nome in a relay(接力).

The race began on January 27. The first musher, Shannon, picked up the medicine from the train at Nenana and rode all night. 11 he handed the medicine to the next musher, Shannon's face was black from the extreme cold.

On January 31, a musher named Seppala had to 12  a frozen body of water called Norton Sound. It was the most 13  part of the journey. Norton Sound was covered with ice, which could sometimes break up without warning. If that happened, Seppala might fall into the icy water below. He would 14 , and so would the sick children of Nome. But Seppala made it across.

A huge snowstorm hit on February 1. A musher named Kaasen had to brave this storm. At one point, huge piles of snow blocked his 15 . He had to leave the trail (雪橇痕迹)to get around them. Conditions were so bad that it was impossible for him to 16 the trail again. The only hope was Balto, Kaasen's lead dog. Balto put his nose to the ground, 17 to find the smell of other dogs that had traveled on the trail. If Balto failed, it would mean disaster for Nome. The minutes passed by. Suddenly, Balto began to 18 . He had found the trail.

 At 5:30 am on February 2, Kaasen and his dogs19  in Nome. Within minutes, Dr. Welch had the medicine. He quickly gave it to the sick children. All of them recovered.

 Nome had been20 .

If you want something new in your spare time, there are some choices for you.

AR Workshop

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AR Workshop studio that offers hands-on classes for decorating home from raw materials.Join an instructor-led workshop where you can make wood signs, framed signs, round signs, centerpiece boxes and more！AR workshop will help you take your home decoration to the next level and have fun while creating it!

Artistic Elements Dance

615-472-9471 /artisticelementsdance.com

Artistic Elements Dance's aim is to develop dancers with excellent, professional technique, humble character and team spirit. We offer Beginner to Pre-Professional Level Classes to dancers from 18 months to adults in the styles of ballet, Jazz, musical theatre, hip hop and more! Our experienced teachers all well-trained are willing to share the love of dance with each student who walks through our doors and ensure our dancers train safely in a positive environment. In addition to group classes, Artistic Elements Dance offers private lessons, open master classes and birthday parties.

Melody Music Studios

615-510-3798 / melodymusicstudios. com

Melody Music Studios offers exciting music and voice lessons, in the student's home or the instructor's personal studio. We offer all styles, traditional and/or by ear, in a fun and positive environment, There's a grace period(宽限期) of three business days to cancel after the trial lesson(试课)，and if you're not satisfied, it's FREE! So you have nothing to lose to sign up today!

My Gym of Brentwood

615-371-5437 / mygym.com/brentwood

My Gym is the expert in children's fitness. It has good programs and facilities designed to help children 6 months through 13 years of age develop physically and mentally. Our structured, age-appropriate,weekly classes include music dance, games, special rides, gymnastics, sports and more. Children have loads of fun as they gain strength, balance, coordination and flexibility while developing social skills and confidence.

Samantha Whiting, from Texas, USA, was on holiday with her family in California earlier this year when every parent's worst nightmare came to life.

While playing on the beach, Samantha spotted her 10-year-old daughter Hayley drifting out into deeper water. She called Hayley back to shore, only for the youngster to realise she was caught in the rip current (离岸流) and couldn't swim back in. The current was dragging her out to sea rapidly and she called for her mum to help her as Samantha desperately tried to reach her little girl. "I will never forget her face when she said, ‘Mum, help me!'" Samantha told KFSN, recalling the terror in her daughter's voice. She managed to reach her daughter but wasn't able to swim her back to shore and the pair were struggling.

Nearby, Kevin Cozzi and his girlfriend heard the screaming. He quickly jumped into action when he realized Hayley was in danger."I've been swimming since I was 3 years old competitively, so I felt like I could get to them,"Cozzi told KFSN. "I ran out there and as soon as I got to the mum, I just told her to give me her daughter because I knew she was struggling."He swam Hayley back to shore and a lifeguard rushed to help the 10-year-old, meanwhile Samantha was thanking the total stranger who had saved her little girl from drowning.

"If it were not for him coming to help me, there's no way that we both would have made it," the grateful mum said.

Months went by, and Samantha only knew Cozzi's first name and that he lived in Merced, California. However, she never stopped looking for the heroic bystander.

Earlier this week, she posted about the rescue in a Facebook group called Merced Neighborhood Watch, and within hours they reconnected. 

Cozzi and his girlfriend had to put off their wedding because of COVID-19, and Samantha decided to set up a GoFundMe account to help Cozzi and his girlfriend have the wedding of their dreams. Both Samantha and Hayley have been invited to the wedding, set for next fall, and look forward to once again thanking Cozzi in person. Cozzi was thankful for their fundraiser, but told journalists,"That girl being saved was enough for me."

Many people think that listening is a passive business. It is just the opposite. Listening well is an active exercise of our attention and hard work. It is because they do not realize this, or because they are not willing to do the work, that most people do not listen well. 

Listening well also requires total concentration upon someone else. An essential part of listening well is the rule known as ‘bracketing'. Bracketing includes the temporary giving up or setting aside of your own prejudices and desires, to experience as far as possible someone else's world from the inside, stepping into his or her shoes. Moreover, since listening well involves bracketing, it also involves a temporary acceptance of the other person. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will seem quite willing to open up the inner part of his or her mind to the listener. True communication is under way and the energy required for listening well is so great that it can be accomplished only by the will to extend oneself for mutual growth.

Most of the time we lack this energy. Even though we may feel in our business dealings or social relationships that we are listening well, what we are usually doing is listening selectively. Often we have a prepared list in mind and wonder, as we listen, how we can achieve certain desired results to get the conversation over as quickly as possible or redirected in ways more satisfactory to us. Many of us are far more interested in talking than in listening, or we simply refuse to listen to what we don't want to hear.

It wasn't until toward the end of my doctor career that I have found the knowledge that one is being truly listened to is frequently therapeutic(有疗效的) In about a quarter of the patients I saw, surprising improvement was shown during the first few months of psychotherapy(心理疗法), before any of the roots of problems had been uncovered or explained. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but chief among them, I believe, was the patient's sense that he or she was being truly listened to, often for the first time in years, and for some, perhaps for the first time ever.

As people travelling by air become increasingly aware of their carbon footprint, flying has become not only one of the most polluting industries, but also one with the most potential to turn things around.

After Solar Impulse 2 completed the world's first flight by a solar-powered aircraft in 2016, airlines and aircraft producers looked to become the first to provide a commercial plane. Bertrand Piccard, one of the pilots responsible for Solar Impulse 2's journey said, "Al1 the clean technologies we've already had can be used everywhere. We have to use them, not only for the environment, but also because they are profitable and able to create jobs."

The following year saw many projects in the aviation (航空) field as the airline industry acknowledged the future of low- carbon transportation methods. In 2017, Zunum Aero, a small aviation company which focused on delivering a range of hybrid-electric (混合电动的) planes received financial aid from JetBlue and Boeing, whilst EasyJet teamed up with Wright Electric to develop battery-powered aircraft and NASA also announced its plans to develop its own electric aircraft.

Orkney Islands, lying about 20 miles north of the Scottish mainland, are rich in renewable resources, especially the wind energy. Loganair, a Scottish airline, is cooperating with aviation companies to make Orkney the world's first fully electric airline routes. However, this is never easy. Due to the limited size and weight of a battery that an airplane can carry, airplane producers are faced with a bottleneck—the continued power supply for electric airplanes. They believe the abundant wind energy in Orkney could be the key to solving it.

The benefits of electric air travel transcend its low-carbon emissions. Aviation experts believe these aircraft's power source will also mean they will be less noisy, smaller, require less maintenance costs, and need a shorter runway to take off and land—this could lead to more airports in small cities and more rural areas being connected to the world at large.

Twenty-four trains, nine countries, 13,500 miles.

They are the numbers behind a train journey one man took from Southampton in the UK to eastern China. Roger Tyers, 37, spent a month on board trains and over $2,500—almost three times the cost of a return flight—to travel to the Chinese port city Ningbo for academic research in May, 2019. It was the climate crisis that drove this socialist to choose this complex route. Tyers told CNN that he felt it necessary to stop flying when UN climate experts warned last year that the world has less than 11 years to avoid disastrous levels of global warming.

Tyers is not the sole person to avoid air travel in response to climate change. Thousands of people worldwide have publicly promised to stop flying, including teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who has inspired youth climate protests around the world. Activist Maja Rosen started the "Flight Free"campaign in Sweden in 2018 with the aim of encouraging 100,000 people not to fly for one year.

Rosen, who stopped flying 12 years ago, says the "Flight Free"campaign helps fight the sense of hopelessness many people feel when it comes to dealing with climate change. "One of the problems is that people feel there's no point in what you do as an individual. The campaign is about making people aware that if we do this together, we can actually make a huge difference,"she said.

A passenger's footprint from an individual flight depends on a number of factors, including how far he flies, how full the plane is, and what class he travels in: First class passengers are given more space than economy passengers, meaning they're responsible for a bigger part of the plane's emissions. Tyers said that his train journey to China produced almost 90% less emissions than a return flight.

What made Tyers go to China by rail? (no more than 5 words)

假设你是学生李华，进入高三后你发现很多同学有为了学习而不吃早饭、经常熬夜等不健康的生活方式。请你根据以下提示以"Say no to unhealthy lifestyles"为题写一份倡议书。

内容包括：1.描述现状；2.给出具体建议；3.发出倡议。

注意：1.写作词数为100左右；2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；