2025年高考英语真题天津卷

Life is a road full of minor inconveniences and major setbacks, which everyone faces,16wealth or social rank. That is why optimism, the ability to see the17side of every negative situation, is key to success.
What made optimism so meaningful to me was when I18the A team of the basketball club for the upcoming season. I had always been the starting point guard, and my19on the A team was something I took for granted. However, I only made the B team,20I worked my hardest. I didn’t understand why until I saw the new A team, crowded with players that all21me.
I had to give the B team a chance. But to my22, the play level was much lower than what I was used to. I lost the drive I’d had before and gradually became23.
One day I came across a social media post of another basketball team, whose point guard was much more24than her teammates. When her teammates made multiple mistakes_25_, which cost them several points, I expected her to be upset, but_26_, she patted her teammates on the back and comforted them. As I watched her more, I noticed that she led her team, always_27_and uplifting her teammates.
The realization hit me like lightning. What I thought was a_28_turned out to be a valuable opportunity, presenting a rare chance to develop_29_. So, I started using my_30_to be a leader for my team. When our coach needed a(n)_31_, I was the first to raise my hand. When my teammates needed help with a skill, I_32_taught them over and over again. My effort paid off as I_33_remarkably not just as a player, but as a person — something I could have never achieved on the A team.
When facing challenges in life, some people_34_them with optimism, while others tend to complain. Optimism is a palette, with which you can paint your own light in the darkness, shelter in a storm, and most importantly, a better_35_of yourself!

Welcome to our university’s Botanic Garden — plan your visit, and find out about what we do!
You can either pay at the Ticket Office on arrival, or book your tickets online. Please note: Tickets cannot be used on any date other than the one they were booked for and are non- refundable (不可退款的).
Guidelines for Visitors
The Garden is an active research facility and a living museum with a collection of over 8,000 plants.
Please bear in mind some simple rules for your visit:
Only trained working dogs are permitted to enter the Garden.
Children must stay with a grown-up at all times.
Stick strictly to the paths and lawns (草坪).
Do not climb the trees.
Please do not pick any part of a growing plant.
Cycling and ball games are not permitted in the Garden.
Guided Tours in the Garden
With over 8,000 plant species and a wonderful range of gardens and plantings to enjoy, there is something for everyone at the Garden, and many different aspects to appeal to a wide variety of interest groups.
◆ Free Drop-in Weekend Tours
Enjoy a free-of-charge Garden tour with one of our expert guides, taking in the seasonal highlights of the Garden.
Our weekend tours are available every Sunday at 11:30 a. m. and 2p. m. throughout the year. During the months of January and February these tours focus on the Winter Garden, Snowdrops and general winter interest.
The free tours last one hour and start from the Fountain, near the MainLawn.
Group Tours
Our experienced volunteer guides will help you enjoy the highlights and provide some of the background history and development of this amazing garden.
These 90-minute, pre-bookable tours are ideal for adult groups wishing to make the most of their visit to our 40-acre site. Please visit the Group Guided Tours page for more details.

My great grandmother received the dollhouse (玩具小屋) from a family friend back in the late 1800s. It was then passed down from generation to generation. I was seven when I discovered it underneath the tree on Christmas morning.
In our house, Mom set up a sewing area. I sat at her sewing machine, my feet barely reaching the presser foot. Mom bent over me, her hands on mine, gently guiding small bits of cloth under the needle to create dollhouse bedding. She also taught me to make mini-blankets. With a little paint and glue, Mom demonstrated that anything could be turned into dollhouse furniture. I learnt to view the world as a place of possibility. I spent hours of my girlhood sitting before my dollhouse, telling made-up stories, and creating miniatures (缩微模型). But eventually school activities took over, and the dollhouse was moved to the attic (阁楼).
Over the next 40 years, the storytelling skills I’d practiced with the dollhouse grew into novel writing skills, and I developed a career as an author. One day, after hours of working on my fourth book, I took a break by surfing the Internet and happened to notice the beautiful dollhouses people posted on social media. They reminded me of mine. I went to the attic, brought it back to my room and started updating it.
During the mindless hours of sewing and furnishing (布置家具), I listened to audiobooks about the history of dollhouses, learning that they were not invented for play. There’s a long, rich history of people in hardship turning to dollhouses to find comfort. They weren’t produced as toys until mass production became standard after 1945. This inspired me to create a novel where art saves the day.
The truth was I myself needed art to save the day. Mom was then slipping away from me owing to progressive memory loss. The only topic we could discuss with any genuine joy was the update of the dollhouse. She loved retelling its history — those old memories. Mom didn’t find it strange at all that her 50-year-old daughter was updating the dollhouse. She just thought it fun and beautiful. And it was. It was a world where Mom and I were at our best together.

All animals take in oxygen from the air they breathe in, and release CO₂ from their blood when breathing out. Most mammals (哺乳动物) can’t directly detect oxygen levels in the blood supplied to their tissues. Instead, they rely on the rising level of CO₂ in their blood to signal that they might need to take a breath. But a recent study published in Science suggests seals (海豹) can sense the amount of oxygen in the blood, and change their diving behavior in response.
To find out if oxygen levels affected seal behavior, Professor McKnight at the University of St. Andrews and his colleagues created a special section in a pool where young seals were held. In one corner, there was a breathing chamber (呼吸室), where they were sheltered from the rain and the wind.
The breathing chamber was surrounded by panels that prevented surface swimming, yet swimming below the surface for about 200 feet would give the seals access to a feeder where they could eat as much fish as they liked. Once the seals got familiar with the setup, the researchers started to gradually change the composition of the air in the breathing chamber, increasing or reducing the levels of oxygen and CO₂ to see an effect on their behavior. Sure enough: the higher the level of oxygen, the longer the seals stayed at the feeder.
The finding suggests that seals don’t just physically respond to oxygen levels by changing their heart rate or breathing, but that they are sufficiently aware of them to change their behavior. This ability would put seals in a class beyond any land mammals that have been tested. Since oxygen levels on land remain stable, humans don’t seem to have evolved (演化) to notice low blood oxygen levels, sometimes not even when they’re about to pass out in free-diving.
Therefore, in free-diving without oxygen tanks, accidents are quite common. Our reliance on sensing CO₂ levels in our blood instead of oxygen may be to blame. Actually, this is a perfectly reasonable strategy on land, where growing CO₂ tends to signal breathing issues. But when holding our breath during diving, relying on CO₂ levels is risky, especially on repeated dives. Because every time we surface and breathe in, our sensitivity to CO₂ is decreased, even if its levels are already high, and this increases the chance that a person will, without awareness, pass out before they get to the surface.

Science serves as a powerful tool for unlocking the mysteries of the universe, but understanding its limitations is essential for its effective application. There are occasions where I have used the handle of a knife as a hammer (锤子), but the result would have been better if I’d had a more suitable tool at hand. As far as science goes, it is really good at testing things that are testable, but not so for those that are not.
We can do, and have done, an impressive amount with our brains. But there are limits. Sometimes these limits go away if we keep at it for long enough — we just need better facilities and experiments to get the answer. Breaking new ground in modern science this way can be costly. Next-generation supercomputers or incredibly large telescopes are expensive, yet these may be required to find answers to some of the unsolved mysteries of the universe.
Sometimes the limits we encounter in trying to unlock the nature of the universe are cognitive (认知的). Think about this: human DNA is only about 1.2 percent different from that of chimps (黑猩猩). Chimps are smart, no question. But could you teach them advanced mathematics? What if our DNA were another 1.2 percent further evolved than it is? What might our brains be capable of then? The level of abstract thinking might be unimaginable.
Sometimes the limits we hit are fundamental. There are laws of nature we may never be able to understand, however advanced our brains might become. There are experiments we might never be able to perform. We may never be able to test what caused the universe to be created, and what caused the cause of the universe being created. This is where science may never break through.
For something to be considered scientific, it must, by definition, be testable. There is a problem here: it may not need to be testable right now, but it must be testable at some point in the future by experiment. If an idea is untestable, that doesn’t mean it is wrong. It means it is untestable for now. These untestable ideas also happen to be some of the most interesting ones, probably because they’ve puzzled humanity for centuries.

In the morning, I write this to-do list:

1. Go to the bank.
2. Get a nice haircut.
3. Pick up my academic statement from college.
4. Submit my poems.
   I think, “That’s enough for one day.”
   Up until a few years ago, I didn’t aim to be anywhere. And in order to be nowhere, one does not need a to-do list as a guide. Focusing only on the most pressing matter in front of me was enough. Let the next urgent moment think for me.
   My mother had tried to teach me about planning my day ever since I was 10. But I never practiced it until I was 25 and done with college. That’s when I awoke to the fact that I didn’t want to waste any more time. I live in Nigeria, where life and success can be difficult. There seem to be many roads to failure here.
   I grew up seeing my mother firmly in charge of her day. She knew — and still knows — where she needed to be at every moment, in every detail. She may not be good at singing, acting, or sports. But she is excellent at planning. Every day she writes a list. I never understood why she had to write down a list that consists of items you can easily hold in your mind. “Your to-do list is like your second mind,” she told my younger self. “If you ever feel lost or overwhelmed, you consult your second mind.”
   I didn’t understand what she meant by “a second mind” until I seemed to lose my first mind in my everyday life. Sometimes, it seems as though it’s the rainy season in my mind, flooded with confused and distracting thoughts that lead nowhere. I need a second mind — now!
   As I sit in the barbershop awaiting my nice haircut, a friend asks me, “What’s next?”
   “Pick up my academic statement from college,” I say. “Then submit my poems.”
   “You’ve got it figured out like a granny,” he jokes.
   “No,” I say, “like my mother.”