广东广州市第二中学2025-2026学年第一学期期末考试高一英语试题

1. Get Sleepy: Hosted by Tom Jones with a soothing British accent, this podcast offers meditative sleep stories. You can mentally wander around a Bavarian castle or attend a 1920s London tea party. Each episode's description includes details about the sounds and atmosphere, so you can choose your favorite.

2. Boring Books for Bedtime: If you like reading before bed but worry about getting too engaged, this podcast is perfect. Host Sharon Handy reads chapters from dull yet interesting books, such as H. G. Wells' A Short History of the World or old car manuals.

3. Nothing Much Happens: Host Kathryn Nicolai, also a yoga and meditation teacher, creates a cozy atmosphere. Each episode starts with a breathing exercise, followed by a warm and uneventful bedtime story read twice, with the second time slower. The stories change with the seasons.

4. Goodnight, World!: This is a collaboration between Headspace and "Sesame Street". Although designed for kids, it can also help adults relax. Each 20-minute episode features beloved characters on adventures, and there are related mindfulness exercises in the Headspace app.

5. Phoebe Reads a Mystery: Phoebe Judge, known from the popular podcast Criminal, reads fictional crime stories chapter by chapter here. She covers classic works like Frankenstein and The Turn of the Screw.

Hope these podcasts become your sleep allies and bring you a restful night every time!

At just 19 years old, while studying mechanical engineering in college, Jessica and her classmates brainstormed a groundbreaking idea: a soccer ball that could produce electricity. The idea for this invention came during a family trip to the countryside of Nigeria, where she saw firsthand how families struggled without regular electricity. The Soccket Ball, a name combining "soccer" and "socket", looks like any other soccer ball, but it has a special feature. As you play with it, the ball captures the energy from being kicked and rolled. After a game, this energy can power small devices like LED lights. For many families without regular electricity, this invention can make a big difference.

Despite gaining strong support from global organizations and media attention, the product faced unexpected difficulties after its launch. Many users reported that the balls broke or stopped working within a few months, failing to live up to the promised three years of useful life. The problems led to criticism from users and negative headlines, putting pressure on Uncharted Play, the company Jessica founded. The team openly admitted that they hadn't expected the equipment to be so damaged by rough play in the country and promised to revise the design with stronger materials and improved internal parts.

Despite these setbacks, Jessica and her team at Uncharted Play continued to work on energy solutions. Their latest invention, a portable jump rope that generates electricity, builds on the Soccket's success with a more durable, lightweight design. Designed for both children and adults, the jump rope can power small devices like phones or flashlights, expanding the reach of their mission. Jessica's key goal remains unchanged: to provide clean renewable energy to people around the world, where electricity shortage limits education, health, and economic opportunities. Her journey proves that even simple, fun activities — like playing soccer or jumping rope — can be transformed into powerful tools to address pressing global affairs.

For centuries, artificial (人造的) light has been a sign of technological advance. Light has shaped human civilization. But while we enjoy its convenience, we often overlook the darker side of lighting: light pollution. It harms ecosystem, with serious results for wildlife, human health and energy use. A 2021 study found that caterpillar (毛毛虫) numbers were 52% lower in areas with street lights. The winter moth (蛾) is a small but important species. In early spring its caterpillars provide key food for blue tit chicks. But light pollution confuses the adult moths, breaks up mating and influences egg-laying, leading to fewer caterpillars. With falling caterpillar numbers, blue tits find it hard to feed their young.

In one sense, light pollution is quite easy to solve — we can simply not turn on the lights and allow the night to be lit naturally by moonlight. But in fact, this is mostly not possible as lights are meant to make humans' lives easier, so humans are often not willing to give them up. If we cannot turn off the lights, there are other management approaches we can take to lessen their harm. We can control their number, make them less strong, and shorten the time they are on.

However, it remains unclear how much artificial light influences invertebrates, and whether they can get used to changes in time. These changes probably influence their health and life, so more studies are needed to understand what difficulties artificial light brings to them. We need experts from different fields to work together to understand the wider influence of artificial light on wildlife biodiversity and ecosystem health, and to find proper solutions.

These altered versions have even pushed some musicians to the top of official singles charts. As a Radio l Anthems host told the BBC, although sped-up versions of songs can help artists go viral, that initial success may not last This isn't just about music. Social media users also accelerate podcasts, movies, etc. for quicker consumption. The sped-up mode provides a faster way to achieve the dopamine (多巴胺) rush that social media aims to spark, leading to addiction and influencing our actions.

While it seems efficient, speeding up content has significant drawbacks. "So many people worked hard making specific decisions about pacing, lighting, timing and music, and speeding that all up just ruins it," a Reddit user commented. Another user also mentioned that if someone consumes content this way, their viewpoint of the movie or the song is not valid.

It seems that people speed up content not because they enjoy movies and songs but rather simply to complete the action of "watching" and "listening". It's as if they're telling the creators: "I don't have the patience to care about all the detailed design and subtle emotions you put into the work." All they want is a quick general idea of "what's going on" and a feeling of "wow, I just consumed another piece of information".

Evidently, this approach weakens creators' efforts and erodes people's patience. However, people often fail to realize that this also destroys their patience with life. Beginning with sped-up songs and movies, it gradually creeps into daily life. A Chinese netizen once shared, "I found myself becoming impatient with doing research for my work or preparing for a test," highlighting how this habit extends to longer-term tasks.

We already live in a fast-paced society, yet we still try to speed it up in every aspect. What's the rush? Some things should not be sped up, like our patience for beauty and hard work.

The world's African elephants are in serious danger. And if we do nothing to put an end to the illegal ivory trade, elephants will be extinct from the wild within the next 20 years.

Many believe that an illegal hunter could get ivory without killing the elephant — this is not true. And the rest lies beneath the surface like an iceberg in water. The tusk (象牙) is not just bone but rather it is alive, filled with nerves and blood vessels (血管) and when broken off, the tusks would likely become infected and lead to a slow and painful death.

However, there is a new form of hope rising from nature itself. African elephants are being born without the tusks that illegal hunters have hunted for decades. But why is the largest land mammal on earth now being born tuskless?

Is such change beneficial to elephants' survival in the long term? As we know, elephant tusks are not just glorious-looking. Therefore scientists are working to track the newly tuskless among them, to see how this unfortunate adaptation affects the species.

Ivory hunters are not the only danger faced by elephants today. And more support is needed than ever to create a safe world where elephants can live together with humans happily, tusks and all.

A. Action should be taken to protect animals in the world.

B. Only two-thirds of an elephant's tusks stick out of their mouth.

C. They also have important uses such as self-defense and digging.

D. It is estimated that one is killed every 15 minutes for their ivory tusks.

E. That's because elephants without tusks have a better chance of surviving.

F. After centuries of being hunted by humans, many African elephants are tuskless.

G. And it's in our power to make this happen by cutting demand and raising awareness.

1 by an "insult (侮辱) stand" from his favorite novel, rather than embracing negativity, he decided to do the2 by giving out free compliments.

Soon, neighbors noticed this special stand, and a steady3 of visitors stopped by. "Once I got my first customer, I thought, ‘I should keep doing this,'" Ethan recalled and4 added that seeing people smile was his favorite part. By employing the secret5 — asking everyone about themselves, Ethan has given personalized compliments to many people over a month.

One memorable6 was with Rainbow Kaelin, who lives nearby. She spotted the stand and7 when driving home. "I saw that it said ‘Free compliments,' and I thought it was so sweet," Kaelin said, her voice8 with the memory. When she mentioned that she was9 a new employee, Ethan's response came without10: "I hope she learns a lot from you." Kaelin thanked him and started to drive off, but Ethan — realizing his compliment wasn't quite right —11 up to her car. "Your name is so unique," he added. "He genuinely wanted to make people's12," Kaelin recalled.

The story reached even more people after Ethan's father Wargo shared a post online, which became an immediate13, drawing countless supportive comments. With the14 messages poured in, Ethan saw the true impact of his stand, from which he learned that his compliments were not merely kind words, but seeds of confidence15 in people's hearts.

Persistence counts because people who do not give up easily  repeatedly.

the popular trends on social media is a fundamental skill for this new media operation job.

It was my parents who those hard times.

She the holiday that they spent together at the sight of the photo.

The school the all-round development of students.

With oil resources , countries are actively seeking alternative energy sources.

Losing that job might be  for him, as he has now found a better one.

nearly one-third of the nation's total economic output, agriculture is regarded as its most vital foundational industry.

Reading classic literary works the development of our thinking.

Children in poor areas have difficulty high-quality educational resources.

I used to be a smartphone addict. the little screen whenever I was strolling along the street, dining with friends or lying in bed at night. Then came the turning point. Head down, eyes fixed on my smartphone, I stepped into the road and a car shot past, nearly knocking me off my feet. I resolved to spend a whole week without my smartphone. Initially, I felt at a loss, as if I had lost something of value. But later I somehow began to appreciate the beauty in life with my own eyes and enjoy the company of friends and families. Life beyond smartphones is richer and more beautiful, and I am going to.

The girl bent down, pushed the stone with all her might, and finally moved it away. She could hardly and jumped up with joy when she spotted some gold coins under the stone. Out of curiosity, the girl picked up the coins, wondering whose coins were missing. Stepping out from behind the tree, the king explained to the girl that the coins were deliberately placed by him to test people's responsibility. The king patted her on the shoulder, saying, "Take the coins as a reward for your sense of responsibility." Indeed, only when people all take responsibilities for the community.

1.倡议的背景与目的；

2.提出三个具体可行的建议(精选高质权威的内容、保持思辨不盲从轻信、…

3.发出呼吁，重申该做法的积极意义。

注意：

1.词数130左右;

2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯;

3.开头和结尾已经给出，不计入总词数。

Dear fellow students,

I am Li Hua, president of the Student Union.

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