An exhibition of vivid photographs and a restored documentary give fresh insight into the Antarctic explorer, who died a century ago.
One hundred years ago, the leader of the last great expedition of the heroic age of polar exploration died from a heart attack as his ship, Quest, headed for Antarctica. The announcement of the death of Ernest Shackleton on 30 January 1922 was greeted with an outpouring of national grief.
This was the man, after all, who had saved the entire crew of his ship Endurance — which had been crushed and sunk by ice in 1915 — by making a daring trip in a tiny open boat over 750 miles of polar sea to raise the alarm at a whaling station in South Georgia.
It remains one of the greatest rescue stories of modern history and led to the idolising of Shackleton in the United Kingdom, a reputation that survived undamaged for the rest of the century. As his contemporary Raymond Priestley, the geologist and Antarctic explorer, later put it: “When disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”
And here and now in 2022, his death is being marked with an elaborately illustrated exhibition — Shackleton’s legacy and the power of early Antarctic photography — which opens at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), and which includes a range of images and artefacts from his expeditions. Additionally, a digitally remade version of South, a documentary film of Shackleton’s 1914-16 Endurance expedition, is being screened at the British Film Institute.
The film and most of the exhibition’s finest images are the handiwork of Frank Hurley, who sailed with Shackleton and who was one of the 20th century’s greatest photographers and film-makers. Both film and exhibition feature striking camera work and provide vivid accounts of the hardships that Shackleton and his men endured as they headed off to explore Antarctica.
Even after he survived the great expedition, he still longed for another trip to Antarctica, and after long negotiations set sail in Quest, from England, with the aim of circumnavigating (环航) Antarctica, Shackleton was by now very ill and had suffered at least one heart attack. On 2 January 1922, he wrote in his diary: “I grow old and tired but must always lead on.” Three days later he had a major heart attack and died a few hours later. He is buried on South Georgia, scene of his greatest triumph.
“Shackleton was an inspirational leader. He had an innate sense of what was possible and achievable. He also had a huge personality but led by example. At the same time, he was sensitive to the needs of the individuals he was leading. For example, after Endurance broke up, his men had lost their protection and shelter. Their social fabric had been destroyed. There would have been disagreement. Yet Shackleton succeeded in keeping them together and made sure they survived.”
1. People were overcome with grief when Ernest Shackleton died because .| A．it was a huge pity that such a brave explorer should have died from a heart attack |
| B．he was the man that wrote about one of the greatest rescue stories of modern history |
| C．he came to his entire crew’s rescue and symbolised hope in extreme circumstances |
| D．there was no one to pray to anymore when disaster came and there was no hope |
| A．It presents Shackleton’s 1914-16 Endurance expedition with powerful Antarctic photos. |
| B．It celebrates the 100th anniversary of the great explorer Ernest Shackleton’s birth. |
| C．It consists of vivid photographs, artefacts, and documentaries of Ernest Shackleton. |
| D．It is created by Frank Hurley, who witnessed Shackleton’s heroic acts with his own eyes. |
| A．He was the leader of a heroic exploration to the South pole, who died from a heart attack off shore. |
| B．He saved the crew members of the sunken Endurance by travelling to raise the alarm in a tiny boat. |
| C．He is universally recognised as the greatest Antarctic explorer who has enjoyed enduring fame. |
| D．He was inspirational, practical, responsible, sensitive towards his men, but had a strong character. |
| A．What they wore would not be accepted by others upon returning. |
| B．They could no longer socialise with others even if they went back. |
| C．The ship could not keep them together even if they survived. |
| D．They could not function socially as they had when there was shelter. |
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【推荐1】For top students from low-income families，the challenge of applying to colleges is particularly difficult. 1 in 4 deal with all of that—the writing，the studying，the researching and applying—completely on their own. One approach to make this whole process easier? Pair students up with an adviser.
That’s the idea behind CollegePoint，an initiative to help gifted students go to schools that match their intellectual(智力的)ability. When a high school student takes a standardized test—the PSAT，SAT or ACT——and they score in the 90th percentile，and their families make less than$80，000 a year，they get an email from the program offering them a free adviser. The advisers listen，guide and answer students’questions.
Connor Rechtzigel，an adviser in Minnesota，sees the importance of his role，for research shows that low-income students are far more likely to undermatch because they don’t think they have what it takes to get in and because many don’t even know what schools are out there. He helped high school senior Justice Benjamin，the first in his family to apply to college，think about what his ideal learning experience was. Finally，Justice narrowed in on smaller schools where he could study environmental science and made his final choice：Skidmore College in New York. He felt empowered by the process.
Figuring out how to pay for college is a major part of what，CollegePoint advisers do. Nakhle，an adviser in North Carolina，is working with Hensley，an Ohio high school senior who can’t get extra financial help from her family. They spent a lot of time comparing and analyzing her financial-aid award letters，which made her decision much clearer. Finally，the Ohio State University offered an option where she would pay nothing. Staying in-state wasn’t her first choice，but it was the best option for her.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?| A．How CollegePoint works. | B．The goal of CollegePoint. |
| C．Ways to apply for a free adviser. | D．The challenge of choosing colleges. |
| A．Overestimating their abilities. | B．Knowing little about colleges. |
| C．Lack of enough learning experience. | D．Failure to get support from their families. |
| A．She didn’t want to stay far from home. |
| B．Her favorite major was provided there. |
| C．She would show her talents to the full. |
| D．The university met her financial needs. |
| A．How to Be a Financial Adviser |
| B．Steps for Top Students to Select Ideal Colleges |
| C．Advisers Help Poor Students Apply to Suitable Colleges |
| D．CollegePoint—a Program Helping Students Score High |
【推荐2】Tao Yuanming and Henry David Thoreau were both poets, but one lived in Ancient China and the other in 19th century America. Superficially, these two men, whose lives were separated in time by nearly 1,500 years, were polar opposites. And yet they shared an intense respect for nature, which made them each an influential figure of their time.
Both men made dramatic transformations to their lives in order to reconnect with nature. As an official in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Tao felt conflicted over life at court. In 405, he quit the service of the court for good, expressing his unhappiness in the now famous line that he would not “bow like a servant in return for five dou of grain”. He spent the next 22 years until his death, working the land in a poor, rural area. From his poetry, we can learn that although his life was arduous, he succeeded in finding contentment in its simplicity and in drawing pleasure from nature.
While Tao’s return to nature was a reaction to a lifestyle he was opposed to, Thoreau’s was a personal decision to transform the way he lived. He had a decent quality of life, but he wanted to live in a simpler way. For two years, two months and two days, he lived in a cottage in the forest on the edge of Walden Pond, focusing on himself and his writing. He explained his reason for doing so in Walden: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.” Both men were happy to withdraw from contemporary life, seeking a harmonious relationship with nature in the quietness of their lives.
Although Tao and Thoreau do not treat nature in quite the same way, their works show its beauty and value. Tao’s nature is a place of fields and villages, in other words, rural, and his animals are domestic ones, such as chickens and dogs. The calm and peaceful life he wrote about is in contrast to and critical of the depressive court life.
Thoreau’s descriptions of nature emphasized the beauty and purity of the wild areas around him. Devoting himself to observations of the natural phenomena, he recorded his detailed findings in his journals. Thoreau’s writing aimed to convince people that animals and plants had a right to live and prosper, as we do. We should live with them in harmony and enjoy nature’s gifts.
It takes considerable courage to reject the easy and familiar and instead try to live closer to nature, as both Tao and Thoreau did. Their choices led them to quiet and reflective lives with fewer material desires. In today’s modern world, their ideas about living simply and being at ease with nature may take us a step closer to attaining personal well-being and fulfillment.
1. Why did Tao Yuanming leave the court?| A．Because he was too old. |
| B．Because he felt conflicted over life at court. |
| C．Because he liked nature so much. |
| D．Because he liked living in a rural area. |
| A．They treated nature in the same way. |
| B．They lived in the same century. |
| C．They were both unsatisfied with their leaders. |
| D．Their works showed the beauty of nature. |
| A．Fields and villages. | B．Chickens and dogs. |
| C．Animals and plants. | D．Mountains and rivers. |
| A．Nature’s wilderness is beautiful. | B．We should raise more animals. |
| C．Man should live in harmony with nature. | D．we should live in the rural area. |
| A．Live closer to nature. | B．Increase material desires. |
| C．Walk a lot in the forest. | D．Share a respect for nature. |
【推荐3】If you are into Greek mythology, you probably have heard the story of Oedipus. This tale, which became one of the best examples of self-fulfilling prophecy, shows how Oedipus and his father Laius, unconsciously (or maybe consciously?) demonstrated their fate. Like the Oedipus tale, we may have self-prophesied our destiny in several aspects of our lives, whether positive or negative. For instance, have you ever foreseen something that eventually happened to you? You’re not alone.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is when a person’s belief generates a conscious or unconscious behavior that makes their thoughts come true. It works like a cycle. You hold a belief about other people and yourself which affects your actions concerning them or yourself. For others, the assumptions affect how you act toward them, thus influencing their views about you.
For a long time, self-fulfilling prophecies have grabbed the attention of sociology and psychology researchers, who want to understand how they impact human behavior. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson demonstrated a unique type of self-fulfilling prophecy with their experiment with children in the classroom: the Pygmalion effect. The researchers told teachers that some of their students were part of the “growth spurts (快速成长)”group based on their IQ tests. Later, they retested the students and collected data from both “ordinary” and “growth-spurts” students, discovering that the “growth- spurts” showed a much better performance than the “ordinary” ones. The Pygmalion effect shows that when you create expectations about people, you will likely treat them based on those expectations. This may influence the person’s behavior, who acts according to that expectation, becoming a classic example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are so deep-rooted in our psychology and social environment that we often don’t even notice that they can influence our activities regularly, whether at home, school, or work. When using self-fulfilling prophecies to achieve goals, it’s essential to have a positive outlook and to focus on the actions you can take to bring about the desired outcome. Believing that you can succeed is an essential part of making it happen.
1. How does the author introduce the topic?| A．By questioning a theory. | B．By making a comparison. |
| C．By giving an example. | D．By citing others’ ideas. |
| A．Those who are diligent are more likely to succeed. |
| B．One insecure about his ability to pass the exam fails at last. |
| C．The lower one’s expectations are, the less disappointed he will be. |
| D．A gymnast puts her most impressive skill at the end of the routine. |
| A．The wide gap between students. |
| B．How IQ tests function in one’s actions. |
| C．The difference of people’s expectations. |
| D．How others' expectations affect one’s behavior. |
| A．How is the Pygmalion effect applied into education? |
| B．Self-fulfilling prophecy: a well-received philosophy. |
| C．How does a self-fulfilling prophecy impact your life? |
| D．Oedipus tale: a good example of self-fulfilling prophecy. |
【推荐1】I. M. Pei, whose modern designs and high-profile projects made him one of the best-known and most prolific architects of the 20th century, has died. He was 102. A spokesman for Pei’s New York architecture firm confirmed his death to the Associated Press. Pei, whose designs included a controversial renovation of Paris’ Louvre Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, died overnight, his son Chien Chung Pei told The New York Times.
Ieoh Ming Pei, the son of an outstanding banker in China, left his homeland in 1935, moving to the US and studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. After teaching and working for the US government, he went to work for a New York developer in 1948 and started his own firm in 1955.
The museums, municipal buildings, hotels, schools and other structures that Pei built around the world showed precision geometry (几何学) and an abstract quality with much respect for light. They were composed of stone, steel and glass and, as with the Louvre, Pei often worked glass pyramids into his projects.
The Louvre, parts of which date to the 12th century, proved to be Pei’s most controversial work, starting with the fact that he was not French. After being chosen for the job by the then president, François Mitterrand, surrounded by much secrecy, Pei began by making a four-month study of the museum and French history. He created a futuristic (未来主义的) 70ft-tall steel-framed, glass-walled pyramid as a grand entrance for the museum with three smaller pyramids nearby. It was a striking contrast to the existing Louvre structures in classic French style and was violently criticized by many French.
Pei said the Louvre was undoubtedly the most difficult job of his career. He said he had wanted to create a modern space that did not detract from the traditional part of the museum. “Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something,” he said in a New York Times interview in 2008. “There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots.”
When Pei won the international Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983, he used the $100,000 award to start a programme for a spiring Chinese architects to study in the US. Even though he formally retired from his firm in 1990, Pei was still taking on projects in his late 80s, such as museums in Luxembourg, Qatar and his ancestral home of Suzhou.
1. What can we learn from the first three paragraphs?| A．Pei is famous for traditional designs in architecture. |
| B．Pei built the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. |
| C．Pei put the elements of light and glass pyramids into the Louvre. |
| D．Pei set up his own firm with the help of a New York developer. |
| A．Positive. | B．Neutral. | C．Objective. | D．Critical. |
| A．To list the modernity of the Louvre innovation. |
| B．To explain Pei’s idea about the Louvre innovation. |
| C．To show Pei’s love for traditional culture. |
| D．To present Pei’s contributions to architecture in history. |
| A．Creative and persistent. |
| B．Productive and stubborn. |
| C．Hard-working and humorous. |
| D．Tolerant and considerate. |
【推荐2】Leonardo da Vinci’s mother may have been a Chinese slave according to a new research by an Italian historian and novelist—Angelo Paratico, who has spent the last 20 years living and working in Hong Kong, researching the links between his homeland and China over the past half century.
Mr
Paratico said the documents he has uncovered during two years of research form the basis of his latest book Leonardo Da Vinci, a Chinese scholar lost in Renaissance(文艺复兴)Italy. The book, which is due to be published next year, uncovers evidence that there’s a link between Da Vinci and the Far East.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Mr Paratico said, “I am sure that Leonardo’s mother was from the East, but to make her a Chinese, we need to use a deductive method(演绎法). One wealthy client of Leonardo’s father had a slave called Caterina. After Leonardo’s date of birth, she disappeared from the documents．She was no longer working there.’’
It is believed that his mother was called Caterina, who, according to some reports, was a local peasant. But Mr Paratico’s new work claims it is most likely that Da Vinci’s mother was a slave. Supporting his theory, he said, “During the Renaissance, countries like Italy and Spain were full of slaves from the East.”
He claimed that there were certain aspects of Da Vinci’s life and works which suggest a Chinese link. For instance, he was writing with his left hand from left to right and he was also a vegetarian, which was not common. Mona Lisa is probably a portrait of his mother，as Sigmund Freud said in 1910. On the back of Mona Lisa, there is a Chinese landscape and even her face looks Chinese.
Mr Paratico said he believes the only way to solve the mystery is to dig out some of Da Vinci’s relations in Florence and extract some DNA.
1. What is Mr Paratico’s latest book based on?| A．His research findings． | B．His living experience． |
| C．His final visit to Italy． | D．His interest in Renaissance． |
| A．His working habit． | B．His ways of writing． |
| C．His birth date． | D．His father’s friend． |
| A．She was a slave of Leonardo’s father． |
| B．She quit working after her marriage． |
| C．She was buried in Florence after death． |
| D．She was probably the model of Mona Lisa． |
Aesha Ash spent most of her life ballet dancing and even turned it into a career as a member of the New York City Ballet. As much as she loved to dance, she found the weight of her obligation heavy because she was often the only African American ballerina (芭蕾舞女演员) in her classes and company.
After retiring from ballet in 2007. Aesha enjoyed the quiet life for about ten years before she decided to come back to ballet, but in a completely new way. She started The Swan Dreams Project that helps kids in poor areas get into the world of ballet. Aesha set up a one-week camp that invited kids to not only learn the basics of ballet, but also get an introduction to French (since she says it is “the language of ballet”).
Her first camp was in 2018 in a poor neighborhood in New York. When she arrived, she was greeted by dozens of students, most of whom were African Americans. She wanted to help kids who otherwise might not have ever had the chance to live in the world of ballet.
On the final day of camp, after a week of learning, the students put on a final performance for their family and friends. Before the performance, Aesha said she was nervous that it would be less of a performance and more of a mess, since the campers were all between 8 and 11 years old. Much to her surprise, it turned out to be perfect. She said. “When we went out to our first circle and the kids began counting in French and performing the steps they had just learned, my heart melted.”
Aesha continues to do whatever she can to help kids learn ballet. She found a way to turn that seemingly unbearable weight she once carried around into something good for kids, as well as for the world of ballet.
1. What does the underlined word in Paragraph 1 probably mean? (1 word)2. When did Aesha decide to start The Swan Dreams Project? (no more than 10 words)
3. Where was Aesha’s one-week camp first held? (no more than 10 words)
4. Why was Aesha surprised on the final day of her first camp? (no more than 10 words)
5. What kind of person is Aesha? Please explain. (no more than 20 words)
