【推荐1】Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. behaviour          B. like-minded        C. alongside        D. maintained     E. knowledgeable     F. specific                           G. related                  H. self—respect        I. Throughout             J. valued                  K. Responsibility

Culture describes a certain set of customs, ideas and social     1    of a group of similar people in a society. Geographical borders usually separate cultures. Some characteristics like language, food habits, social rules, music and arts stay    2    in one particular culture.

    3    the world, we have a variety of cultures. Cultures have been     4    from time immemorial and have been handed down from one generation to another. Cultures help people connect with each other and build communities, within the same cultural backgrounds. Individuals belonging to the same culture are usually    5    and have the same ancestral values.

Here are some reasons Why Culture Is So Important.

◇Self-realization: When we study about the roots of our cultures and follow them accordingly, we get to know about ourselves much better. We can be better     6    to our origin and value ourselves more. It improves our     7    and dignity to follow our culture. It also makes us feel proud to belong to our own culture.

◇Knowledge: Detailed study about every aspect of our culture can give us profound knowledge. Cultures never demand blind followers. Everything is well explained and accounted for in history. Studying about them will make us more    8    .

◇Meaning of life: Cultures teach us the real meaning of life. Every phase of our life demands different actions and our culture teaches us that. As we grow up and grow old, our culture holds our hands and directs us towards the right path.

◇Safeguard future generations: Cultural traditions were made by our experienced ancestors who wanted to pass on their     9    knowledge about life to every generation of mankind, henceforth, to make their survival easier.

◇    10    : Cultural traditions teach us to be responsible human beings. A cultureless and lawless human being is just another animal. Our culture and society make us be the responsible entities(实体)that we are.

【推荐3】Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. inhabit F. fascinating K. agonizing

B. interact G. finalist

C. exhausted H. settled

D. reshape I. productivity

E. state J. extreme

Picking Up the Word of the Year

The story of a year is sometimes easy to identify: the financial crisis of 2008, the Brexit Trump populist wave of 2016 or the pandemic of 2020. The most     1     event of 2022 has been the war in Ukraine, yet those earlier stories have lingered in the headlines. For language-watchers, all that meant much new vocabulary to consider.

Facebook renamed itself Meta in 2021 and spent vast sums in 2022 trying to activate metaverse, an online world in which people can     2     via avatars and virtual-reality goggles. Instead profits dropped as the company struggled even to get its employees to     3     its metaverse. The word was a(n)     4     in Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year contest, but was not selected. Perhaps another year. This is still a word (and a world) looking for users.

Instead, Oxford’s choice this year—based on a public vote—was goblin mode, a(n)     5     in which people indulge their laziest or most selfish habit. After years of covid, recession and inflation, people are tired and     6     and finding it harder to keep up appearances. But another product of the Covid era is Johnson’s word of the year.

After, the lockouts of 2020, followed, in 2021, by a low return to the office, 2022 was the year that hybrid work     7     in. Working at home some of the time has advantages of decongesting cities and fewer painful commutes, and disadvantages like fears of lower     8     combined with a sense of never being off duty. In the spring Twitter a policy of unlimited working form home for those who wanted it. When Elon Musk bought the company he promptly decreed the opposite. But most firms have not gone to either     9     instead trying to find the best of both worlds.

As a coinage, hybrid work is no beauty. But it will     10     cities, careers, family life and free time. That is sufficient qualification for a word of the year.

【推荐1】Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. conferencing B. opposed C. concerned D. spread E. valued F. partner G. creating H. communicate I. instruction J. normal K. supervising

Education officials and industry experts are debating the future of online learning. The discussion is important because recently hundreds of universities in the United States have moved classes online because of the     1     of the new coronavirus.

For Asha Choksi, the rise of internet-based or online study programs has led to major improvements in higher education.

“What it’s done is, it’s actually given a lot more power to students in terms of how, when and where they learn,” the head of research for Pearson Education told VOA. Her company is     2     online learning programs.

Colleges and universities worldwide have been looking for ways to provide satisfactory education off campus and outside of     3     business hours. The decision by many schools in the U. S. to suspend in-person classes during the recent coronavirus crisis has shown how important online teaching can be. And demand for such programs is increasing.

The financial advising company Tyton Partners     4     the online program management industry at over $1.5 billion in 2015.

Choksi, however, argues that her company is     5     a path to higher education for people who might not have been able to get a degree otherwise.

Pearson Education is one of a growing number of companies that     6     with schools to create online study aids and full degree programs. Classes meet online through video     7    . In this way, students are able to     8     with each other and their professors even when they are far away from school.

Online learning also permits older students, who work, full-time and support families, to work on their education in their free time. It can be helpful for people who might have difficulty coming to a college campus, such as disabled students or those who live far from any college or university.

However, recent research suggests the majority of college students and professors prefer in-person instruction. In addition, some experts are     9     that companies in charge of online learning programs are not clear about the policies they have with the schools they serve.

Last year, the EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research published two opinion studies on online higher education programs. Researchers asked over 40,000 American undergraduate students and 9,500 professors what they thought about these programs. In both groups, as least 70 percent of people said they prefer in-person     10    .

【推荐2】Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. signs       B. significant       C. supervised       D. decline       E. involved        F. distinct       G. justification       H. mapped       I. mounting       J. hospitalized       K. equivalent

In a study comparing 46 severe COVID-19 patients with 460 matched controls, researchers found the mental impacts of severe COVID-19 six months later can be the     1     to aging 20 years—going from 50 to 70 years old—or losing 10 IQ points.

“Cognitive impairment is common to a wide range of neurological disorders, including dementia (痴呆), and even routine aging, but the patterns we saw—the cognitive ‘fingerprint’ of COVID-19—was     2     from all of these, ” says neuroscientist David Menon from the University of Cambridge in the UK, who was senior author of the study.

The experiment involved 46 people who’d gone to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge as a result of COVID-19 between March and July 2020. An average of six months after their infection, researchers     3     them using a testing tool called Cognitron to see how they were doing in areas such as memory, attention, reasoning, as well as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The researchers compared their results against a matched control group of 460 people. These results were then     4     to see how far they deviated from expected scores for their age and demographic (群体), based on 66, 008 members of the general public.

The results showed that those who’d survived severe COVID were less accurate and had slower response times than the general public.

The magnitude of cognitive loss was similar to the effects of aging between 50 and 70 years of age-or losing 10 IQ points.

The somewhat good news is that, upon follow up, there were some     5     of recovery—but it was gradual at best. “We followed some patients up as late as ten months after their acute infection, so were able to see a very slow improvement, ” says Menon.

“While this was not statistically     6    , it is at least heading in the right direction, but it is very possible that some of these individuals will never fully recover.”

This study only looked at the more extreme end of     7     patients, but there are plenty of other studies showing that even ‘mild’ cases can cause similar cognitive impacts. What’s still not fully understood is why and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes this cognitive     8    .

Previous research has shown that during severe COVID, the brain decreases glucose (葡萄糖) consumption in the frontoparietal network (额顶网络), which is     9     in attention, problem solving, and working memory. It’s also known that the virus can directly affect the brain.

But the researchers suggest the likely culprit isn’t direct infection, but a combination of factors: including reduced oxygen or blood supply to the brain; clotting of vessels; and microscopic bleeds. There’s also     10     evidence that the body’s own immune and inflammatory response may be having a significant impact on the brain.

The research has been published in eClinical Medicine.

【推荐3】Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. continue            B. prospering            C. matters            D. enrolling            E. sees            F. disastrous G. booming            H. victim                 I. souring             J. opposition          K. transform

In the normal run of things, late summer     1     airports in the emerging world filled with nervous 18-year-olds, jetting off to begin a new life in the rich world's universities. The annual journey of more than five million students is a victory of globalization. Students see the world; universities get a fresh batch of high-paying customers. Yet with fights grounded and borders closed, this migration is about to become the pandemic's latest     2    .

For students, covid-l9 is making life difficult. Many must choose between inconveniently timed seminars streamed into their parents' living rooms and inconveniently deferring (延缓) their studies until life is more normal. It is     3     for universities, who will not only lose huge chunks of fees from foreign students but, because campus life spreads infection, they will have to     4     the way they operate.

Yet the disaster may have an upside. For many years government funding and     5     demand have allowed universities to resist changes that could benefit both students and society, but they may not be able to do so for much longer.

Higher education has been     6    . Since 1995, as the notion spread from the rich world to the emerging one that a degree from a good institution was essential, the number of young people     7     in higher education rose from 16% of the age group to 38%. However, troubles are piling up. China has been a source of high-paying foreign students for Western universities, but relations between the West and China are     8    . Students with ties to the army are to be banned from America.

Governments have been turning against universities, too. In an age when politics divides along educational lines, universities struggle to persuade some politicians of their merit. President Trump attacks them for “Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education”. Some 59% of Republican voters have a negative view of colleges. In Britain universities' noisy     9     to Brexit has not helped. Given that the state pays for between a quarter and a half of tertiary education in America, Australia and Britain, through student loans and grants, the government's willingness     10    .