北京市西城区2018届高三英语第一次模拟考试试卷

—It's about 3 blocks away. I _____ you there.

—There are so many papers _____. I'm really busy recently.

—Yes, I wish I _____ with you earlier.

    “And this is me kissing the Blarney Stone”, says Carrie, my seventeen-year-old daughter. She turns the pages of her new photo album, recounting her recent ten-day1 abroad, and my mind wanders back…way back to when she was only five.

    “Someday I'm going to Ireland”, she said, holding her Childcraft book in her lap. Her blue eyes 2 as she looked at the beautiful pictures. “Well, maybe you can!” I said. However, it was3 for our family to pay for the luxury of traveling. I was working as a secretary. My husband Charlie had to close his 4 last year due to his poor health…

    Ten years later, Carrie came home from school one day, hardly able to contain her5“Mama, you'll never 6where the class is going. To Ireland!” she smiled 7“You're kidding!” I said. “Ireland! Where you've always wanted to go!”

    “The trip is 8 for year after next, and the $2,100 can be paid in installments (分期付款).” Then she added, “But that's too much… isn't it?” Her voice was9 yet doubting. “Well,” I said slowly, “Daddy and I can't help much10 you have two years to earn the money.” “You think so?” Carrie's face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Well,” I11 “maybe you could use your father's bakery and sell baked goods.” Sell baked goods? We12 at each other. Carrie was an excellent 13! This would work!

    So the plan was14 Carrie began working, making a variety of baked goods. She used dried apples, cooked, seasoned and spiced to perfection. Soon, however, fried apple-pies became the customer favorite. All ingredients were 15—real shortening (起酥油), real butter—and the crust (皮) was handmade and hand-rolled. Finally the pies were fried to a beautiful, golden brown! The finished product was an extremely pleasant treat, winning16from even the little old ladies in these hills who have been making dried-apple pies for decades17 began rolling in, and the Ireland fund grew, and well 18 the given time the trip abroad was paid in full…

    Now I'm looking at her album as she proudly points out the19 she visited: castles of Ireland, historic bridges and churches, cobblestone (鹅卵石) streets of Dublin… so much like those in her Childcraft book. My daughter will forever remember this dream come true, a dream that began in the heart of a five-year-old girl and was completely made 20 by the delicious apple pie!

    Become a Volunteer and Make a Difference

    The First Tee, as an outstanding youth development organization, is always searching for good people that want to volunteer at one of our many Pittsburgh area locations.

    We're Looking for You!

    Nationwide, we currently have more than 3,700 coaches signed up with The First Tee as well as volunteers. But you don't have to be a golf professional or even a good golfer. With The First Tee Coach Program, we provide the training you need.

    Developed with input from leading experts in the field of positive youth development, our program focuses on making participants stronger and more confident through decision-making and exploring options, inspiring the golfers of tomorrow to look to the future, set goals, and unlock their potential.

    We also need more volunteers to make The First Tee possible. Opportunities include:

    Assistant Coach: assist in our weekly golf clinics. All that we request is that you make a 7-week commitment (one day per week), for 2 hours each week. Each clinic is led by one of our trained staff members who creates a written lesson plan for our volunteers to follow.

    Database Manager: input data entry of participants, volunteers, and community relation records and update chapter information for Home Office and community relations. The database manager is expected to update the data a minimum of every other week.

    Equipment Manager: organize and sort donated equipment, get rid of unfit equipment, and arrange equipment for distribution to participants at least once a week.

    Greeter: register participants, hand information to parents, greet visitors, answer phone and provide general program information.

Process of Becoming a Volunteer

    Begin by filling out the Google Forms application below. Once Alison Boyle (our Director of Volunteer and Participant Services) receives your completed application, she will contact you for an in-person interview.

    CLICK HERE to fill out a Volunteer Application via Google Forms

    For more information, please contact our Director of Volunteer and Participant Services, Alison Boyle, at aboyle@the first teepittsburgh.org.

    Most heroes are not super. They don't appear in comic books, on television, or in movies. They just do what they believe needs to be done to make their world a better place. Bike Batman is one of them.

    Bike Batman is a 30-year-old married engineer who lives in Seattle, Washington. He's a cyclist who also buys and sells bikes as a hobby.

    About three years ago, he was looking for a bike for his wife. He found one on Craigslist, a website where people list things they want to sell. As he often does, he also looked at Bike Index, a popular website that allows users to register their bikes and post reports when they're taken. The bike, which he was considering purchasing, clearly matched one reported stolen on Bike Index. Then he called the person who claimed to be the bike's owner and arranged to meet him— supposedly to complete the sale. When the two men met, Bike Batman told the thief, “You've got two options. You can wait until a police officer gets here, or you can just get out of here.” You can imagine what the thief did.

    After that first success, Bike Batman developed a safer routine. When he sees questionable bike ads on Craigslist, he cross references the image with bikes reported on Bike Index. Once he has confirmed it with the owner, he arranges a meet-up with the thief and will call the Seattle police department so that officers can participate in the action. In more than half of the 22 cases in which he has got back and returned bikes, the thieves have been arrested. In one case, Bike Batman even helped a family recover a wide range of prized possessions that suspects had stolen during a home burglary.

    His nickname came from a discussion with a police officer who suggested he be called “Robin Hood”. Since he wasn't exactly stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, “Batman” seemed a better fit. The idea of a superhero punishing criminals feels pretty silly to him, but the main reason he continues his work is to keep up Seattle's reputation as a friendly city.

    The online takeaway industry is growing in China along with the rapid development of the Internet economy. But environmental activists complain that the huge volume of plastic utensils (用具), wrapping and containers presents a great challenge to the environment, and that the heavy use of throwaway wooden chopsticks is reducing natural resources.

    On September 1, the Beijing No.4 Intermediate People's Court accepted a lawsuit filed by the Chongqing Green Volunteer League, an environmental non-government organization (NGO), against the country's three largest food delivery platforms—Baidu Waimai, Ele.me and Meituan. The NGO stated that the companies failed to provide customers with the choice to not receive throwaway plastic utensils along with their food deliveries. Meanwhile, these utensils have created large amounts of rubbish and caused serious ecological damage.

    In response, both Meituan and Ele.me, which acquired Baidu Waimai in August, have promised to take measures to reduce plastic waste. Meituan announced that it would appoint a chief environmental officer to oversee environmental issues from plastic waste and upgrade its smartphone app to provide consumers with the option of ordering food without single-use chopsticks, spoons or napkins. Ele.me followed by offering a similar choice and putting forward a plan to introduce suppliers of degradable (可降解的) plastic utensils to restaurants in the long term.

    Is there a possible way out? Combined efforts by delivery platforms, consumers, restaurants and government departments are required to address plastic waste pollution.

    For platforms, promoting environmental protection and introducing this idea to consumers are a meaningful move. Moreover, in the future, they should also make strict rules on the use of plastic utensils. For example, no more than one plastic bag should be used to wrap soup dishes, and all plastic products should be degradable. It is a long and difficult task for them, and the recent reactions from Ele.me and Meituan are just beginnings.

    Considering most takeout food packaging is thrown into garbage bins and then taken away along with other household garbage, sorting of waste also becomes more important. Government departments could play a major role in this, and by recycling some materials, waste pollution could be reduced and resources saved. Furthermore, there have been growing calls that the government should also invest more in developing degradable plastic products or environmentally friendly alternatives.

    Though consumers enjoy the convenience yet also suffer exposure to the pollution, many of them have paid little attention to the plastic waste problem. Environmental groups suggest that consumers change their habits a little by using their own utensils and dishes and refusing unnecessary plastic containers.

    Ownership used to be about as straightforward as writing a cheque. If you bought something, you owned it. If it broke, you fixed it. If you no longer wanted it, you sold it or threw it away. In the digital age, however, ownership has become more slippery. Since the coming of smartphones, consumers have been forced to accept that they do not control the software in their devices; they are only licensed to use it. As a digital chain is wrapped ever more tightly around more devices, such as cars and thermostats, who owns and who controls which objects is becoming a problem. Buyers should be aware that some of their most basic property rights are under threat.

    The trend is not always harmful. Manufacturers seeking to restrict what owners do with increasingly complex technology have good reasons to protect their copyright, ensure that their machines do not break down, support environmental standards and prevent hacking. Sometimes companies use their control over a product's software for the owners' benefit. When Hurricane Irma hit Florida this month, Tesla remotely updated the software controlling the batteries of some models to give owners more range to escape the storm.

    But the more digital strings are attached to goods, the more the balance of control leans towards producers and away from owners. That can be inconvenient. Picking a car is hard enough, but harder still if you have to dig up the instructions that tell you how use is limited and what data you must give. If the products are intentionally designed not to last long, it can also be expensive. Already, items from smartphones to washing machines have become extremely hard to fix, meaning that they are thrown away instead of being repaired.

    Privacy is also at risk. Users become terrified when iRobot, a robotic vacuum cleaner, not only cleans the floor but also creates a digital map of the inside of a home that can then be sold to advertisers (though the manufacturer says it has no intention of doing so). Cases like this should remind people how jealously they ought to protect their property rights and control who uses the data that is collected.

    Ownership is not about to go away, but its meaning is changing. This requires careful inspection. Devices, by and large, are sold on the basis that they enable people to do what they want. To the extent they are controlled by somebody else, that freedom is compromised.

    The Art of Slow Reading

    If you are reading this article in print, chances are that you will only get through half of what I have written. And if you are reading this online, you may not even finish a fifthThey suggest that many of us no longer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion.

    So are we getting stupider? Actually, our online habits are damaging the mental power we need to process and understand textual information. Round-the-clock news makes us read from one article to the next without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content. Our reading is frequently interrupted by the noise of the latest email and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.But we are gradually forgetting how to sit back, think carefully, and relate all the facts to each other.

     A desperate bunch of academics want us to take our time while reading, and re-reading. They ask us to switch off our computers every so often and rediscover both the joy of personal engagement with printed texts, and the ability to process them fully. What's to be done then? Most slow readers realize that total rejection of the web is extremely unrealistic. They feel that getaway from technology for a while is the answer

    Personally, I'm not sure whether I could ever go offline for long. Even while writing this article, I am switching constantly between sites, skimming too often, absorbing too little. Internet reading has become too rooted in my daily life for me to change. I read essays and articles not in hard copy but as PDFs. I suspect that many readers are in a similar position You can download a computer application called Freedom, which allows you to read in peace by cutting off your Internet connection. Or if you want to avoid being disturbed by the Internet, you could always download offline reader Instapaper for your iPhone. If you're still reading my article, that is slow reading.

A. The Internet is probably part of the problem.

B. Now some campaigns are advocating slow reading.

C. These are the two findings from the recent research projects.

D. But if you just occasionally want to read more slowly, help is at hand.

E. Some of them have suggested turning their computers off for one day a week.

F. Slow reading can help connect a reader to neighborhood and become popular.

G. Because of the Internet, we have become very good at collecting information.

1）作品内容要求；

2）提交时间和方式；

3）表示愿意提供帮助。

注意： 1）词数不少于50；

2）开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。

Dear George,

Yours,

Li Hua

注意：词数不少于60。

提示词：花架flower shelf