安徽省宣城中学2023-2024学年新高一自主招生考试英语试题

Once upon a time, there was a shepherd （牧羊人）. He 1  dozens of sheep. He tended （照料）the sheep in the daytime, and kept them in the sheepfold （羊圈）at night.

One morning, the shepherd found that one sheep was 2 . His neighbor helped him check the sheepfold. "There is a hole in the wall of your sheepfold. A wolf went in through the hole, and took the sheep away at night. You should 3 the sheepfold quickly and fill up the hole," the neighbor said.

However, the shepherd was 4 to the neighbor's advice. He replied, "I have already lost the sheep. It is no 5 repairing the sheepfold." The next morning, the shepherd found that another sheep was gone.

The neighbor said, "If you had 6 my advice, you wouldn't have made the same mistake. Aren't you going to take action right now?"

The shepherd filled up the hole 7  at once. After that, 8  of his sheep was taken away by the wolf. 

If there is a mistake, we should 9  it as soon as possible. In this way, we can avoid more 10 . 

Zhang Shuo became a winner of Labor Day Medal of this year. Before that, he was 1 with the title of "the Most Beautiful Worker" on April 30,

2022. 

Zhang Shuo got a job of designing advertisements in Harbin in 

2015. Two years later, he decided to return to his hometown, Dongsheng Village in Hegang, to help his aging parents with their rice farm. He started his job as a food deliveryman （快递员）in 

2018. "I just wanted to use the off season of farming to 2 some money, and I didn't plan on it becoming a permanent （ 长 期 的 ）job," he said. "I found the 3 development space, so I decided to 4 and do better."

Zhang Shuo was always attaching more importance to the quality of service than the quantity of orders. In late December 2018, a snowstorm 5 deliverymen to take food to customers on foot. To prevent the food from getting cold, Zhang Shuo 6 the food with his coat. Around two hours later, the customer received his food and it was still 7 . Every time Zhang Shuo finished a（n）8 , he would take away the rubbish outside his customer's door, which brought him lots of good reviews.

In June, 2019, Zhang Shuo became the manager of the delivery operations of Meituan in Hegang City. Since then, he began to find more ways to help young villagers get out of poverty （贫穷）and increase their 9 . "I hope to recruit （招募）more excellent young people and double the size of my team in the future," he said. "10 , I hope to lead more local people to a better life."

Henry remembers the day well. It was a day that would change his life. He was sitting at the kitchen table, watching his ten-year-old granddaughter, Sophia, do her homework. She had asked him a question about history and was now 1 him with big brown eyes, waiting for an answer. Henry looked at the kettle and then out of the kitchen window. Henry can still hear himself say, "I'm sorry, my dear. I don't know."

Henry had spent forty years working as a librarian in a school. He was now 2  and spent his days looking after Sophia. However, he felt that he should be doing more with his life, though he was in his seventies with grey hair and 3  wrinkles in his forehead （额头）. As Sophia continued her homework, he read an article in the newspaper about the health 4  of older people going back to university. The article said that it kept the brain 5  and helped prevent loneliness. He made the 6  there and then. The next morning, he would go to Birkbeck, University of London and take a 7  in history. 

After four years, Henry got his degree in history. "8 the course has given me such a sense of achievement," he says. "It has also made me 9 about doing all the other things that I've never had the courage to try before. It's 10 too old to learn."

Those who make great discoveries must often overcome many challenges along the way—as was the case with the explorer Christopher Columbus. Columbus was born in a port city of Italy in 

1451. As a teenager, he loved sailing, and he showed great interest in geography, which inspired him to begin his career as a seaman. 

Columbus stuck to searching for a direct sea route to the East Indies by sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. After trying many times, he received financial support from the King and Queen of Spain. On 3 August 1492, he set off from Spain with three ships carrying about 90 crewmen. His adventure was full of challenges: it took longer than expected, they faced the lack of food, and one of the ships was leaking badly, which put everyone on this ship in great danger. The men on board were in panic. Although they faced so many challenges, Columbus managed to keep everyone out of danger with his knowledge and bravery across the ocean. Finally, on 12 October, the crew found land in the distance. Columbus called the natives living on the islands Indians because he believed that he was in the East Indies. However, the shores they had reached were of the Caribbean, not the East Indies. 

Between 1493 and 1504, Columbus found more land over the course of the following three voyages. The major contribution of this great explorer is that he "discovered" the New World. His discovery encouraged explorers such as Captain James Cook to explore and discover more vast areas of the world. His voyages opened a new chapter of the Age of Exploration.

Most people agree that honesty is a good thing. But does Mother Nature agree? Animals can't talk, but can they lie in other ways? Can they lie with their bodies and behavior? Animal experts may not call it lying, but they do agree that many animals, from birds to chimpanzees （大猩猩）, behave dishonestly to fool other animals. Why? Dishonesty often helps them survive.

Many kinds of birds are successful at fooling other animals. For example, a bird called the plover sometimes pretends to be hurt in order to protect its young. When a predator （掠食动物）gets close to its nest, the plover leads the predator away from the nest. How? It pretends to have a broken wing. The predator follows the "hurt" adult, leaving the baby birds safe in the nest.

Birds called cuckoos （布谷鸟）have found a way to have babies without doing much work. How? They don't make nests. Instead, they get into other birds' nests secretly. Then they lay their eggs and fly away. When the baby birds come out, their adoptive parents feed them.

Chimpanzees, or chimps, can also be sneaky. After a fight, the losing chimp will put out its hand to the other chimp. When the winning chimp puts out its hand, too, the chimps are friendly again. But an animal expert once saw a losing chimp take the winner's hand and start fighting again.

Chimps are sneaky in other ways, too. When chimps find food that they love, such as bananas, it is natural for them to cry out. Then others chimps come running. But some clever chimps learn to cry very softly when they find food. That way, other chimps don't hear them, and they don't need to share their food.

As children, many of us learn the saying "You can't fool Mother Nature." But maybe you can't trust her, either.

You throw a flying disc （飞盘）. Your friend catches it. Well done! 

Flying discs are fun toys. They are becoming popular in China. On the Internet, there are more than thousands of posts about disc games, talking about things like rules and dress codes. 

Flying discs are very beginner-friendly. It is easy for anyone to throw a disc almost anywhere they want to, from a field to a beach. No special skills are needed. Boys and girls can also play together, making it a good activity to socialize.  

For those who want to compete, there are many choices. They can try the team disc sport called "ultimate". There are no judges. You must overcome your desire to cheat. Put simply, it makes us better people. In another game called "disc golf", players try to hit faraway targets with a disc. Like in golf, the lowest number of throws wins.

 They started with pie tins （烤盘）, which inspired the birth of the toy. After enjoying the pies, some university students soon found that the empty pie tins could be tossed （扔）around. They had great fun with them in the 1930s. In 1948, a man named Walter made a plastic disc with his partner Warren.  The discs quickly became popular. 

A. It could fly farther and higher than a pie tin. 

B. Flying discs have a history of nearly 100 years. 

C. Unlike other games, it encourages honesty and fair play. 

D. All these make the flying discs popular with young people today. 

E. In fact, young people enjoyed this fun activity almost a century ago. 

F. Social activities like attending parties will improve your communicative skills. 

When a thought has found words

Poetry is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure. In Western high schools, poetry is seldom taught because it is considered to be out of date and have little to do with the life of today's students.

However, compared with the situation in the West, poetry is still an important part of the curriculum （课程）in China. Recently, the Ministry of Education has increased the number of ancient Chinese poems for students to memorize and recite, from 14 to 

72. Why is it important to learn poems? 

First of all, poetry is a necessary part of learning traditional Chinese culture. It is a path to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and feelings that are common to everyone but that we may be unable to express, the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those feelings into words and bring us self-understanding. 

Poems can also express beauty. In a few short lines, even something common can become beautiful. Here is a poem called Fog by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes/on silent haunches （弓腰）/and then moves on. Yes, a fog does move smoothly, silently and like a cat, and Sandberg catches that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful. 

Of course, to really enjoy poetry, it has to be read aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poems, like Homer's Epics （《荷马史诗》）and China's Book of Songs, were spoken for hundreds of years before they were written.

The American poet Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!

1. 语法填空

The 53-year-old craftswoman Ji Yulan, an inheritor （继承人）of the intangible heritage （非物质遗产）of paper-cutting from Xinjiang, has engaged in the art for over 40 years. 

She made paper-cuts of people from all （walk）of life. One of her pieces showed a nurse with long, beautiful hair, wearing a mask and a protective hat. The craftswoman was deeply （impress）by female medical workers cut their long hair to better fit into the protective suits while fighting in the front line against the epidemic. "Women are attractive in long hair and takes a lot of courage to cut it," Ji said. So she created a paper-cutting work to show the image and named the piece The Angel in Harm's Way.

Ji has 12 students, aged from 3 to 

23. She often encourages her students to create works based on a younger mindset. "I am （extreme）positive about the future of the craft. The younger generation have a real sense of responsibility to protect （culture）heritage."

Chinese calligraphy is called the art of lines. Practicing calligraphy helps a person to achieve relaxation and inner peace. In the past, children  （train）at an early age to practice writing. Great attention is paid 

 calligraphy today with exhibitions and competitions among both the young and the old.  （learn）calligraphy, one will need a brush, ink, paper, and ink stone, which  （be）commonly recognized as the Four Treasures of Study. As Chinese culture spreads throughout the world nowadays, calligraphy is enjoying  （great）popularity than ever before. Many foreigners are practising it now.  calligraphy uses Chinese characters （汉字）as a way of expression, one does not have to know Chinese to admire its beauty.