Nature and culture are often seen as opposite ideas. What belongs to nature cannot be the result of human activities and on the other hand, cultural development is achieved against nature. However, this is not the only opinion on the relationship between nature and culture. Studies in the development of humans suggest that culture, whether taken as an effort against nature or a natural effort, is part of the development of the human species(物种).
Several modern writers saw the process of education as a struggle(斗争) against human nature. We are born with wild natures, such as eating and behaving in a disorganized way or acting selfishly. Education uses culture as a way to get us out of our widest natures; it is thanks to culture that the human species could learn to adapt(适应) , progress and raise itself above and beyond other species.
Over the past century and a half, however, studies in the history of human development have shown that the formation of culture is part of the biological adaptation. Consider, for example, hunting(打猎) . It seems to be an adaptation, which allowed humans to move into new and different areas, opening up the opportunity to change living habits. At the same time, the development of weapons(武器) is related to that adaptation-from rocks and stones to a set of hunting tools, and from hunting tools to rules relating to the proper use of weapons. Hunting also seems to be responsible for a whole set of bodily abilities, such as balancing on one foot. Just think of how this very simple thing is closely related to dance, a key expression of human culture. It is then clear that biological development and cultural development are closely tied.
The transmission of culture seems to be directly related to what’s in our blood. Just as snails carry their shells, so do we bring along our culture. However, culture is also passed on among people of the same time or among people belonging to different populations. We can learn how to make jiaozi even if we were born from Russian parents in Paris just as we can learn how to speak English even if none of our family or friends speak that language.
1. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．Culture belongs to human nature. |
| B．Nature teaches humans how to adapt. |
| C．Humans are supposed to be well organized. |
| D．Education pushes the human species to progress. |
| A．To suggest some possible ways of changing living habits. |
| B．To stress the importance of tools in humans’ struggle for life. |
| C．To show how culture develops as humans adapt to the environment. |
| D．To explain why there is a need to call for the proper use of weapons. |
| A．system | B．spread | C．start | D．spirit |
| A．Culture and nature are separate yet balanced. |
| B．Culture depends much on nature to progress. |
| C．Nature and culture are different but connected. |
| D．Nature follows the unwritten rules set by culture. |
Huge Waves Destroying Arctic Ice Faster than Expected
Ice covers much of the Arctic Ocean（北冰洋）. Some pieces of ice are huge, like moving islands. As temperatures have increased, however, some of the ice has begun to disappear. Scientists have discovered huge waves（海浪）in the arctic waters.
The waves were discovered by accident in May, 2010. Scientist Aleksey Marchenko and his students set out on a trip. They wanted to study the icy waters.
On May 2, the ship traveled east and stopped next to a large chunk of ice around 50 miles from the small island of Hopen. Marchenko prepared to lead his students out onto the Ice.
"We were ready to go but when I went out, I discovered many cracks（裂缝）around," he remembers.
He decided to move the ship deeper into the ice to keep safe. The farther in they went, he thought, the harder the ice would become. As they pushed forward, however, the ship experienced small waves, and then bigger ones. Soon, the waves broke up the ice around the ship into thousands of smaller pieces．
Within an hour, Marchenko and his team saw a wave that was about 13 feet high. The ship's navigation（航行）system finally recorded the largest waves. They were more than 20 feet in height. The waves were so strong that they forced huge pieces of ice to jump up and down, breaking the ice into smaller pieces within just one hour. Scientists had never imagined that the process could happen so fast. The waves in these areas used to be small.
The speed and force of the huge waves there makes it impossible to know in advance when they are coming. That could be dangerous for navigators and local communities who are unprepared for huge waves or depend on sea ice to protect them. Wildlife like polar bears and walruses that depend on sea ice to live is also in danger.
Some scientists think people will soon see even bigger waves in these icy waters. As waves break up ice, the seas will become more open, and the waves will get even stronger. There are stormy times ahead.
1. When did Marchenko and his students discover huge waves in the arctic waters?___________________________________________________________
2. Why did Marchenko and his students set out on the trip?
___________________________________________________________
3. What did Marchenko decide to do to keep safe?
___________________________________________________________
4. How high were the largest waves recorded by the navigation system?
___________________________________________________________
5. What is Paragraph 7 mainly about?
___________________________________________________________
3 . Sometimes it seems that time is flying. Perhaps it doesn’t need to feel this way. Our experience of time can be possibly changed. By understanding the psychological (心理学的) processes behind our different experiences of time, we might be able to slow down time a little.
One basic law of psychological time is that time seems to slow down when we’re exposed(接触) to new environments and experiences. The law is caused by the relationship between our experience of time and the amount of information our minds process. The more information our minds take in, the slower time seems to pass.
It follows, then, that we have different experiences of time in different situations. In some situations, our life is full of new experiences. Our minds process a lot of information and time seems to slow down. In other situations, we have fewer new experiences and the world around us becomes more and more familiar(熟悉的). We become insensitive to our experience, which means we process less information, and time seems to speed up.
How can we slow down time? Here are two suggestions.
Firstly, since we know that familiarity makes time pass faster, we can expose ourselves to as many new experiences as possible. We can give ourselves new challenges, meet new people, and expose our minds to new information, hobbies and skills. This will increase the amount of information our minds process and expand (增加) our experience of time.
Secondly, and perhaps most effectively, we can give our whole attention to an experience-to what we are seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling or hearing. This means living through our senses rather than through our thoughts. For example, on the way home, focus your attention outside of yourself, instead of thinking about the problems you have to deal with. Look at the sky, or at the buildings you pass, traveling among them. This open attitude to your experiences helps take in more information and also has a time-expanding effect.
To a certain degree, we can understand and control our experience of time passing. It’s possible for us to slow down time by expanding our experience of time.
1. According to the writer, we can expand our experience of time by .| A．going to bed on time | B．traveling to new places |
| C．having dinner as usual | D．printing the same materials |
| A．Being familiar with the world around helps us get more information. |
| B．Understanding psychological time makes life pass more quickly. |
| C．We can take in more information by living through our senses. |
| D．We should build a stronger relationship between time and us. |
| A．Slow Down Time | B．Only Time Will Tell |
| C．Race Against Time | D．Time Will Not Come Twice |
How Much Can We Afford to Forget?
In 2018, Science magazine asked some young scientists what schools should teach students. Most said students should spend less time memorizing facts and have more space for creative activities. As the Internet grows more powerful, students can access (获得) knowledge easily. Why should they be required to carry so much of it around in their heads?
Civilizations（文明）develop through forgetting life skills that were once necessary. In the Agricultural（农业的）Age, a farmer could afford to forget hunting skills. When societies industrialized, the knowledge of farming could be safe to forget. Nowadays, smart machines give us access to most human knowledge. It seems that we no longer need to remember most things. Does it matter?
Researchers have recognized several problems that may happen. For one, human beings have biases（偏见），and smart machines are likely to increase our biases. Many people believe smart machines are necessarily correct and objective, but machines are trained through a repeated testing and scoring process. In the process, human beings still decide on the correct answers.
Another problem relates to the case of accessing information. When there were no computers, efforts were required to get knowledge from other people, or go to the library. We know what knowledge lies in other brains or books, and what lies in our heads. But today, the Internet gives us the information we need quickly. This can lead to the mistaken belief-the knowledge we found was part of what we knew all along.
In a new civilization rich in machine intelligence, we have easy access to smart memory networks where information is stored. But dependency on a network suggests possibilities of being harmed easily. The collapse of any of the networks of relations our well-being（健康）depends upon, such as food and energy, would produce terrible results. Without food we get hungry; without energy we feel cold.And it is through widespread loss of memory that civilizations are at risk of falling into a dark age.
We forget old ways to free up time and space for new skills. As long as the older forms of knowledge are stored somewhere in our networks, and can be found when we need them, perhaps they’re not really forgotten. Still, as time goes on, we gradually but unquestionably become strangers to future people.
1. ·Why are smart machines likely to increase our biases?| A．Because they go off course in testing and scoring. |
| B．Because we control the training process on them. |
| C．Because we offer them too much information. |
| D．Because they overuse the provided answers. |
| A．frees us from making efforts to learn new skills |
| B．. prevents civilizations from being lost at a high speed |
| C．misleads us into thinking we already knew the knowledge |
| D．separates the facts we have from those in the smart machines |
| A．a sudden failure | B．the basic rule |
| C．a disappointing start | D．the gradual development |
| A．To question about the standards of information storage. |
| B．To discuss our problems of communication with machines. |
| C．To stress the importance of improving our memorizing ability. |
| D．To remind us of the risk of depending on machines to remember. |
The study was performed among 253 schoolchildren in Spain .Lifelong exposure(接触) to green space in the living places was recorded—using the information on the children’s addresses from birth up through to the time of the study. Brain structure was studied using 3D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Working memory and inattentiveness(注意力不集中)were graded with computers.
“This is the first study that shows the association between long-term exposure to green space and brain structure.” Says Dr. Payam Dadvand, the leading researcher of the study, “Our findings suggest that exposure to green space early in life could result in beneficial structural changes in the brain.”
The findings show that long-term exposure to greenness is positively associated with white and grey matter volumes in several parts of the brain. Some of them are related to higher scores on cognitive tests. Moreover, larger volumes of white and grey matter in those parts might lead to better working memory and less inattentiveness.
Exposure to nature has been thought to be necessary for brain development in children. Another study of 2,593 children shows that children in school with more green space have a greater increase in working memory and a greater decrease in inattentiveness.
Humans are believed to be tied to nature. Playing in greener areas offers children opportunities to search and learn. Accordingly, green space is thought to prompt important exercises in discovery, creativity and risk taking. These exercises in turn positively influence brain development.
Dr. Dadvand’s study suggests how such structural changes could bring about the beneficial effects of green spaces on cognitive development, it also adds to the proof that suggests the lasting effects of early life exposure to greenness on our health and the benefits of increasing greenness in cities.
Further studies are needed to prove the findings in other populations, settings and climates. And researchers need to examine differences according to the nature and quality of green space.
1. The second paragraph is mainly about .
| A．how the study was performed | B．what was recorded in the study |
| C．how long the study lasted | D．who took part in the study |
| A．control | B．encourage | C．balance | D．change |
| A．Working memory influences white and grey matter in the brain. |
| B．Dr. Dadvand stressed the importance of changing the environment. |
| C．Studies proved the influence of greenness on populations outs of Spain. |
| D．Living in greener neighborhoods benefits children in brain development. |
In the past, people thought it was strange to use the left hand. Young students looked down upon their left-handed classmates. Some children were even punished for using their left hand to write. But these days parents and teachers have accepted that. In almost every school in the world, left-handed students can use their left hand to write.
What causes people to be left handed or right handed? Experts have searched long and hard on this. They conclude（得出结论） that left-handed people are left handed for the same reason that right-handed people are right handed. One out of every ten people just is a left-handed people are right handed. One out of every ten people just is a left-hander. It’s simply like the color of our eyes – some people have brown eyes, while some others have black eyes.
However, may researchers think that left-handers and right-handers are different in some aspects. Right-handers are more talkative and outgoing than left-handers. Many right-handed people understand spoken words better. For example, after they listen to directions to a supermarket, they can find it easily. Right-handers are good at organizing people, too. They are also better basketball guards. Just ask Yao Ming.
Research shows that left-handers are creative and artistic. Many famous performers, like Jim Carrey and Paul McCartney, are left handed. Many left-handers learn better visually（在视觉方面）. In art, both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were left handed. In music, Ludwig van Beethoven was left handed. In science, you find Newton and Einstein. The left-handed people are also really good at tennis and other single sports.
If you prefer one hand, but you are still good at writing with the other, you are mixed. Research shows mixed-handers can remember everyday things better than other people. What did you eat for lunch two weeks ago? If you’re mixed handed, you can probably remember.
1. If right-handers cut up potatoes with there left hand, they will .
| A．get hurt | B．give up cutting |
| C．feel awkward | D．change their tools |
| A．Causes of being left handed. |
| B．Encouragement to left-handers |
| C．Punishment for using the left hand. |
| D．Changes in opinions on left-handers. |
| A．learn better visually |
| B．are good organizers |
| C．are better at single sports |
| D．give clear directions to others |
| A．may be more talkative and outgoing |
| B．are ordinary people like right-handers |
| C．might remember everyday things better |
| D．no longer need to use right-handed tools |
