The impact of technology on language is a topic that often causes concern, with many assuming that it is simply ruining it. However, language experts resist such opinion, noting that there is little evidence to support the view that speech is getting worse. Gretchen McCulloch, in her book Because Internet, focuses on what can be learned about language from the Internet rather than talking about its negative effects.
McCulloch compares studying language online to growing bacteria (细菌) in a Petri dish (有盖培养皿), where trends emerge and disappear quickly. The influence of strong ties like friends or family versus weak ties on language change is analyzed, with computer simulations (模拟) revealing that having both strong and weak ties helps spread updates in a community.
The role of social media platforms in language change is also discussed. Twitter, with its mix of strong and weak ties, is shown to drive more language change than Facebook, which is controlled by stronger ties. Emoji is highlighted as a universal digital expression of gestures, not a language. Additionally, there is evidence that the use of Internet “innovations” such as “omg” dates back to pre-computer eras.
McCulloch’s book focuses on the birth of a new medium for language rather than a new type of language. The rise of mass writing on the Internet, characterized by frequent, error-filled, and short-lived communication, challenges traditional ideas about writing’s importance. McCulloch suggests future historians should see this as a return to more casual (随意的) language, paying more attention to the value of tools that improve social interaction online. The book argues against the idea that these changes might lead to the end of “real” writing, advocating for an appreciation of anything that enhances human connection and the enjoyment of each other’s company.
1. Which of the following topics is NOT included in the book Because Internet?| A．How technologies ruin languages. |
| B．The new birth of a new medium for language. |
| C．The changes Twitter brings to people’s language. |
| D．What people can get about language on the Internet. |
| A．The development of digital languages. |
| B．The influence of the social media platforms on language change. |
| C．The different functions of social media platforms. |
| D．The connection between humans and the Internet. |
| A．Interpersonal bonds play a role in online communication. |
| B．Formal language is unlikely to improve social interaction. |
| C．The birth of new media has removed writing’s importance. |
| D．Mass writing may make traditional writing come to an end. |
| A．In a poetry collection. | B．On a medical website. |
| C．In a travel guidebook. | D．In a newspaper. |
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【推荐1】Jorg Muller, an ecologist at the University of Würzburg, with his colleagues, proposes a way to measure the biodiversity—listen to the jungle by AI, in a paper published in Nature Communications.
The rainforests are very important and always alive with the sounds of animals, which is useful to ecologists. When it comes to measuring the biodiversity of a piece of land, listening out for animal caller is more effective than uncovering the bushes looking for tracks and paw prints. The latter analysis method is time-consuming, and it requires an expert pair of ears. Muller’s idea was to apply the principle of smartphone apps which can identify the sounds of birds, bats and mammals to conservation work.
The researchers took recordings from across 43 sites in the rainforests. Some sites were relatively primitive, old-growth forests. Others were areas that had just been cleared for pasture(牧场) recently. And some other original forests had been cleared but then abandoned, allowing themselves to regrow. The various calls were identified by an expert,and then used to construct a list of the species present. As expected, the longer the land had been free from agricultural activity, the greater biodiversity it hosted. Then it was the computer’s turn. “We found that the AI tools could identify the sounds as well as the experts,” says Dr. Muller.
Of course, not everything in a rainforest makes a noise. Dr. Muller and his colleagues used light traps to catch night-flying insects, and DNA analysis to identify them. They found that the diversity of noisy animals was a reliable representative for the diversity of the quieter ones, too.
Besides measuring the biodiversity, the results are also expected to be applied to outside ecology departments. Under pressure from their customers, firms like L’Oreal, a make-up company, and Shell, an oil firm, have been spending money on forest restoration projects around the world. Dr. Muller hopes that an automated approach to checking on the results could help monitor such efforts, and give a standard way to measure whether they are working as well as their sponsors say.
1. Why does Muller propose to measure biodiversity with AI?| A．To make a new conservation principle. |
| B．To seek away fit for hot environments. |
| C．To work more efficiently than manpower |
| D．To study the rainforests more specifically. |
| A．It agreed with the work from experts.. |
| B．It identified different types of raintarests. |
| C．It recorded more sounds in the abandoned forests. |
| D．It was used to restore the biodiversity for pasture. |
| A．DNA analysis is skeptical in the research. |
| B．Quiet animals are as diverse as noisy ones. |
| C．A rainforest is always full of various noises. |
| D．AI technology is used to catch the insects. |
| A．The research focuses on biodiversity only. |
| B．L’Oreal and Shell develop monitoring apps. |
| C．The research will assist in forest restoration. |
| D．AI’s help will attract some sponsors’investment. |
【推荐2】October 15th is the Global Hand washing Day. Activities are planned in more than 20 countries to get millions of people in the developing world to wash their hands with soap. For example，donors(捐赠者) will give 150，000 bars of soap to schools in Ethiopia.
Experts say people around the world wash their hands every day, but very few use soap at so-called important moments. These include after using the toilet, after cleaning a baby and before touching food.
Global Hand washing Day is the idea of the Public-Private Partnership for hand washing with soap. Partners include the United Nations Children's Fund, American government agencies, the World Bank and soap makers Unlever and Procter and Gamble. The organizers say all soaps are equally effective at removing disease-causing germ(细菌). They say the correct way to wash is to wet your hands with a small amount of water and cover them with soap. Rub(揉搓) it into all areas, including under the fingernails(指甲). Rub for at least twenty seconds. Then rinse well under running water. Finally, dry your hands with a clean cloth or wave them in the air.
The Partnership for Hand washing says soap is important because it increases the time that people spend in washing hands. Soap also helps to break up the dirt that holds most of the germs. And it usually leaves a pleasant smell. The Partnership for Hand washing also says washing with soap before eating or after using the toilet could save more lives than any vaccine(疫苗)or medicine. Hand washing could also prevent the spread of other diseases. When people get germs on their hands, they can infect(感染)themselves by touching their eyes, noses or mouths. Then they can infect others.
1. What's the best title for this passage？| A．Say no to washing hands in the wrong way. |
| B．Find out why washing hands carefully is so important. |
| C．Hand washing so important-it gets a day of its own. |
| D．Want to live a longer life？-wash your hands. |
| A．how to wash your hands correctly |
| B．why washing hand with soap is so important |
| C．the dangers of washing hands without soap |
| D．when we should especially wash our hands with soap |
| A．Medical care | B．Public service |
| C．Health report | D．Advertisement |
【推荐3】When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn't sit quietly. Back in 1983,two scientists,Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees (枫树) getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants send through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds,VOCs for short.
Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It's a plant's way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Obviously. Because we can watch the neighbors react.
Some plants give out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They give out smells designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was launching now becomes lunch.
In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors. The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking,stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.
Does this mean that plants talk-to-each-other? Scientists don't know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so in effect,was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to "overhear” the cry. So information was exchanged,but it wasn’t a true, intentional back and forth.
Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago,imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate (亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There's a whole lot going on.
1. What does a plant do when it is under attack?| A．It makes noises. | B．It stands quietly. |
| C．It gets help from other plants. | D．It sends out certain chemicals. |
| A．The attackers will get attacked |
| B．The insects will gather under the table. |
| C．The plants will get ready to fight back. |
| D．The attackers will give out smelly chemicals. |
| A．talk to one another on purpose |
| B．warn people of a coming danger |
| C．protect themselves against insects |
| D．help their neighbors who are under attack |
| A．The world is changing faster than ever. |
| B．People have stronger senses than before. |
| C．We don't fully understand the world. |
| D．People in Darwin's time were more imaginative |
【推荐1】Chloe Silvestre feels so fortunate like a winner of a lottery ticket (彩票). As a working mum with two young children, she is the winner in the “granny game”, allowing her career to develop and saving a fortune along the way. If Chloe paid for her own childcare in London, it could cost £40,000.
“Both my mother and mother-in-law are available and passionate,” she said. “They have looked after my children, so they needn’t go to nursery. Sometimes, they even bring an evening meal for us when we get home from work, or have my children stay so we can go away at weekends.”
Most grandmothers help look after their grandchildren. Yet the exchange is not always good for the grannies’ own careers. “Young grannies in their 50s consider childcare as a burden as they are also trying to deal with their own jobs. For those in their 70s, it may be too physically demanding. Yet for those in their 60s, it’s usually great,” said Kanji, professor at Goldsmiths.
Kanji extolled the results and said, “The care the children get is exceptional. It’s one-on-one, loads of books, no screen time and good fresh food. We often get comments on how confident and polite they are and chatty with adults. Their social skills are there because they spend much time with someone who listens and responds to them. The arrangement has bonded all three generations too, over shared meals for example.”
The parents and children have all the benefits of grannies’ involvement. So do grannies themselves. “We saw that grandparents who stopped looking after their grandchildren suffered mental health impacts from that withdrawal,” said Kanji.
Chloe’s mum Janet thinks that she has the best side of the childcare bargain. She said, “It can be tiring but they fill an emotional gap. I’d be very lonely without them. It’s so wonderful to be able to help. If everyone did it, they would know what a precious thing it is.”
1. Why does Chloe feel so fortunate?| A．She won a lottery ticket. |
| B．She has two young children. |
| C．Her mother paid for the childcare in London. |
| D．Her mother and mother-in-law help care for her children. |
| A．Grandmothers love their own jobs. |
| B．Women’s employment is unsatisfactory. |
| C．Not all grandmothers are suitable for childcare. |
| D．Looking after children is physically demanding. |
| A．Repeated. | B．Praised. | C．Abandoned. | D．Generated. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Uncertain. | C．Supportive. | D．Skeptical. |
【推荐2】Electronic media such as email, instant messaging, video games, and television, has influenced almost every aspect of our daily lives.
Screen time becomes a particularly important issue when discussing children’s use of media.Experts now recommend children’s screen time should be limited to no more than 2 hours per day, including television and non-school related computer usage.
Unfortunately, it appears that this recommendation is not followed in most families. One recent study found that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend nearly 45 hours per week watching television, playing video games, and surfing the Internet.
| A．Most children know more about electronics than adults do. |
| B．Kids easily grow dependent on technology for entertainment. |
| C．Parents should think of ways to manage their children’s screen time. |
| D．This is more time than they spend doing homework,or reading for pleasure. |
| E．However,the effect of being all the time in front of a screen is not entirely positive. |
| F．So before you watch your favorite TV series,remember to set a good example. |
| G．Children under the age of 2 are generally encouraged to have no screen time at all. |
【推荐3】Your peers are people your age or close to it who have experiences and interests similar to yours. You and your friends make dozens of decisions every day，and you influence each other’s choices and behavior. This is often ______ —it’s human nature to listen to and learn from other people in your age group.
Sometimes，though，the stresses in your life can actually come from your peers. They may pressure you into doing something you’re uncomfortable with，such as shoplifting，doing drugs or drinking，or taking dangerous risks when you are driving a car.
The pressure to conform（随潮流）can be powerful and hard to resist. A person might feel pressure to do something just because others are doing it. Peer pressure can influence a person to do something that is relatively harmless—or something that has more serious consequences. People may feel pressure to conform，so they fit in or are accepted，and they don’t feel awkward or uncomfortable. When people are unsure of what to do in a social situation，they naturally look to others for cues（暗示）about what is and isn’t acceptable.
The people who are most easily influenced will follow someone else’s lead first. Then others may go along，too—so it can be easy to think，“It must be OK. Everyone else is doing it. They must know what they’re doing.”Before you know it，many people are going along with the crowd—perhaps on something they might not otherwise do.
Responding to peer pressure is part of human nature—but some people are more likely to give in，and others are better able to resist and stand their ground.
It’s not always easy to resist negative peer pressure. But when you do，it is easy to feel good about it afterwards. And you may even be a positive influence on your peers who feel the same way—often it just takes one person to speak out or take a different action to change a situation.
1. Which is most likely to be filled in the blank in Paragraph 1?| A．positive | B．negative |
| C．impossible | D．uncertain |
| A．Your teachers give you a lot of homework. |
| B．Your classmates persuade you to cut class. |
| C．Your parents expect high scores from you. |
| D．Your relatives invite you to attend a party. |
| A．get a feeling of being accepted |
| B．feel a sense of achievement |
| C．set a good example for others |
| D．stand out in a crowd |
| A．Giving in to peer pressure is unavoidable. |
| B．Peer pressure usually leads to serious results. |
| C．Everyone can make a difference by resisting negative peer pressure. |
| D．Going along with the crowd usually means making a right choice. |
| A．different types of peer pressure |
| B．ways to deal with peer pressure |
| C．thoughts on peer pressure |
| D．the influence of peer pressure on people |
【推荐1】People need light for daily activities, but in some places in the world, access to reliable power is a problem, and hurricanes and earthquakes can make the matter worse.
Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork understand how important light is to people in need. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Sreshta and Stork, then graduate students in architecture and design at Columbia University, wanted to do something to help. “We wanted to create something, a basic necessity and we focused in on lighting, ” says Sreshta.
As a school assignment, Sreshta and Stork designed a lighting product that was light-weight, portable and wireless, something that might help improve the safety and living conditions of Haitians. The result was the LuminAID light—an inflatable(可充气的)plastic, waterproof rectangle light that can be recharged with solar power. What was only a school project for Stork and Sreshta turned into a more serious undertaking when friends began sending the lights to those in need. “We made this in our kitchens and we built the first 50 originals by hand,” says Stork.
In their final year of architecture school, Sreshta and Stork filed a patent for the portable lamp, and shortly after graduating, the two traveled to India and conducted field tests on their original. Stork says visiting villages without stable access to electricity was really meaningful to them. “It helped us understand the houses and the conditions that these people were living in. And what was so interesting is one of the villages that we’ve visited. The house was made out of really thick cement, so even in the daytime; it was completely dark inside the house. So we saw real need for portable lighting,” Stork says.
They admit that when they started their business LuminAID in 2011, they didn’t know much about disaster relief and humanitarian aid. “We knew we had a product that could potentially make a difference in people’s lives after disasters like the earthquake in Haiti or even in places where people lack stable electricity,” says Sreshta. “We have been fortunate enough to work with partners like non-government organizations, humanitarian groups and disaster relief organizations which distribute our lights to people in need. ”
The company also sells the LuminAID light to customers through their Give Light, Get Light program. And for each purchase by an individual, the program sends a light to someone in need.
1. For what purpose did Sreshta and Stork travel to India?| A．To try out their light. |
| B．To give away their light. |
| C．To work with some organizations. |
| D．To help people in disaster-struck areas. |
| A．They have helped a lot of people in need. |
| B．They began to know much about disaster relief. |
| C．They have made much money out of LuminAID. |
| D．They get a lot of help from many organizations. |
| A．From 2010 Haiti earthquake. |
| B．From their teacher’s requirement. |
| C．From what they learned in university. |
| D．From their experiences during earthquakes. |
| A．They can’t be bought by individuals. |
| B．They can be used with convenience. |
| C．A patent of such a product hasn’t been applied. |
| D．They were all made in their kitchens and by hand. |
When we see something we don’t like，we wish it could be different．We cry out for something better．That may be human nature，or perhaps it’s something ingrained(根深蒂固的) in our culture．The root of the unhappiness isn’t necessarily that we want things to be different．However, it’s that we decided we didn’t like it in the first place．We’ve judged it as bad，rather than saying, “It's not bad or good，and it just is it．”
In one of my books，I said“You should expect people to mess up and expect things to go differently than you planned”．Some readers said it's too sorrowful to expect things to go wrong．However, it’s only negative if you see it as negative and judge it as bad．Instead，you could accept it as the way the world works and try to understand why that is．
This can be applied to whatever you do：how other people act at work，how politics works and how depressing the news media can be．Accept these things as they are，and try to understand why they’re that way．It will save you a lot of sadness，because you’ll no longer say,“Oh．I wish bad things didn’t happen!’’
Does it mean you can never change things? Not at a11．But change things not because you can’t accept things as they are，but because you enjoy the process of changing，learning and growing．
Can we make this world a better place? You can say that you’11 continue to try to do things to help others，to grow as a person，to make a difference in this world．That’s the correct path you choose to take，because you enjoy that path．Therefore，when you find yourself judging and wishing for difference，try a different approach：accept，and understand．It might lead to some interesting results．
1. The author believes that we feel unhappy maybe because ___________.
| A．it is our natural emotion in the life |
| B．culture asks us to be different from others |
| C．everyone has their own opinions on things |
| D．we dislike something in the beginning |
| A．depressing | B．frightening | C．delighting | D．idealistic |
| A．acting well at work and in politics |
| B．feeling depressed for the news media |
| C．accepting and understanding what has happened |
| D．saying something negative when bad things come |
| A．to help others and make a difference |
| B．to enjoy what you have to do in the work |
| C．to judge yourself and make a wish for you |
| D．to try a new way when making the world better |
| A．Expecting things to be different gives us hope． |
| B．Accepting can make our life happier and better． |
| C．Traditional culture becomes root of unhappiness． |
| D．Judging good or bad is important for our world． |
Experiments with schoolchildren who did well on a given test show that those who were praised for being smart and then offered a more challenging or less challenging task afterward usually chose the easier one. On the other hand, children praised for trying hard— rather than being smart—far more often selected the more difficult task.
If we try hard to avoid mistakes, we aren't open to getting the information we need in order to do better. In a writing study, experiments showed that those who are so scared to make mistakes perform worse in writing tasks than those who aren't as worried about being perfect. They fear receiving any kind of negative feedback, so they don't learn where they went wrong and how to get better.
We don't just learn more when we're open to mistakes, we learn deeper. Research tells us that if we're only concerned about getting the right answer, we don't always learn the underlying concepts that help us truly understand whatever we're trying to figure out. Mistakes need to be seen not as a failure to learn, but as a guide to what still needs to be learned. As Thomas Edison said, “I am not discouraged, because every abandoned wrong attempt is another step forward."
Furthermore, we often make mistakes because we try new things—we wander away from accepted paths. Teflon, penicillin—these are examples of great discoveries made by mistake. Take a page from Albert Einstein, who said, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. "
1. What will happen to students praised for being smart in face of choosing tasks compared to students praised for working hard?
| A．He will ask his teachers for advice. |
| B．He will hide his mistakes from his teachers. |
| C．He will work harder to avoid mistakes. |
| D．He will choose a less challenging task. |
| A．The more mistakes we make, the more we learn. |
| B．Mistakes can be used as a positive factor for success. |
| C．Being open to mistakes help you understand the truth. |
| D．A step forward may come from mistakes you've made. |
| A．One must follow a correct path to avoid mistakes. |
| B．To become an Einstein, you should make mistakes. |
| C．Making mistakes is not a disadvantage in a way. |
| D．You can't make mistakes unless you try new things. |
| A．We can never avoid making mistakes when we work. |
| B．Success can't be achieved without making mistakes. |
| C．Try every means to avoid mistakes in our daily life. |
| D．Mistakes should be treated with a correct attitude. |
