1 . I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria.I was a(n)
What this demonstrates is how
Things
But
| A．early | B．aimless | C．careful | D．poor |
| A．instructors | B．neighbors | C．friends | D．characters |
| A．snow | B．fruits | C．cuisine | D．weather |
| A．disappeared | B．set | C．come out | D．gone down |
| A．briefly | B．regularly | C．scarcely | D．easily |
| A．convinced | B．puzzled | C．concerned | D．satisfied |
| A．heroes | B．foreigners | C．Africans | D．children |
| A．remained | B．changed | C．worsened | D．worked |
| A．read | B．understand | C．find | D．keep |
| A．in spite of | B．on behalf of | C．because of | D．instead of |
| A．confusion | B．shift | C．block | D．activity |
| A．realized | B．suspected | C．claimed | D．forgot |
| A．take | B．exist | C．believe | D．major |
| A．discovery | B．popularity | C．imagination | D．analysis |
| A．classic | B．remarkable | C．whole | D．single |
2 . With an abundance of sun and wind, Spain is positioning itself as Europe’s future leader in green hydrogen production to clean up heavy industries. But some energy experts express caution because this process relies on massive availability of zero-carbon electricity.
Green hydrogen is created when renewable energy sources power an electrical current that runs through water, separating its hydrogen and oxygen molecules (分子). The process doesn’t produce planet-warming carbon dioxide, but less than 0.1% of global hydrogen production is currently created in this way.
The separated hydrogen can be used in the production of steel, ammonia (氨) and chemical products, all of which require industrial processes that are harder to stop fossil fuels. Hydrogen also can be used as a transportation fuel, which could one day transform the highly polluting shipping and aviation sectors.
Spain’s large, windswept and thinly populated territory receives more than 2,500 hours of sunshine on average per year, providing ideal conditions for wind and solar energy, and therefore green hydrogen production.
“If you look at where hydrogen is going to be produced in Europe in the next million years, it’s in two countries, Spain and Portugal,” said Thierry Lepercq, the founder and president of HyDeal Ambition, an industry platform bringing together 30 companies. “Hydrogen is the new oil.”
Lepercq is working with companies like Spanish gas pipeline corporation Enagas and global steel giant ArcelorMittal to design an end-to-end model for hydrogen production, distribution and supply at a competitive price. Criticism has centered on green hydrogen’s higher cost compared with highly-polluting “gray hydrogen” drawn from natural gas. Lepercq argues that solar energy produced in Spain is priced low enough to compete.
Globally, Lepercq said, “Electricity is 20% of energy consumption. What about the 80% that is not electrified? ... You need to replace those fossil fuels. Not in 50 years’ time. You need to replace them now.”
1. Why are some experts cautious about green hydrogen production in Spain?| A．It needs large amounts of sun and wind. | B．It has an effect on heavy industries. |
| C．It causes conflicts among countries. | D．It uses lots of zero-carbon electricity. |
| A．Ideal geographical conditions. | B．The support from government. |
| C．Hydrogen production technology. | D．Well-developed public transports. |
| A．It is highly priced. | B．It is easy to store. |
| C．It is competitive. | D．It is highly-polluting. |
| A．Spain manages to use zero-carbon electricity. | B．Spain struggles to lead EU in heavy industry. |
| C．Spain takes the lead in preventing air pollution. | D．Spain replaces fossil fuel with green hydrogen. |
3 . Baby Miloszek was born with a heart defect. His condition is too
Just a week after
Days later, a Polish convenience store called Zabka
“We were very touched by the extremely
| A．particular | B．optimistic | C．serious | D．common |
| A．Undoubtedly | B．Unfortunately | C．Additionally | D．Absolutely |
| A．expect | B．permit | C．ensure | D．afford |
| A．crowded | B．turned | C．brought | D．stepped |
| A．earning | B．declaring | C．battling | D．defeating |
| A．parcel | B．message | C．card | D．list |
| A．sold | B．returned | C．purchased | D．saved |
| A．expected | B．needed | C．accepted | D．commanded |
| A．health | B．dream | C．heart | D．story |
| A．transport | B．provide | C．cover | D．cost |
| A．kindness | B．news | C．sympathy | D．gratitude |
| A．secret | B．reputation | C．money | D．medal |
| A．flexible | B．noble | C．gentle | D．awkward |
| A．recovery | B．request | C．fundraiser | D．award |
| A．contribute | B．present | C．fight | D．change |
4 . I was waiting in a checkout line. A woman and two boys were ahead of me. At the cash desk, a white-haired man had begun to
But today, it was something else. The man didn’t have
Eventually, his
But I had no idea just how
Then I realized all it took to witness this flash of
| A．bag | B．list | C．check | D．receive |
| A．attempt | B．barrier | C．intention | D．mission |
| A．fetch | B．slice | C．weigh | D．taste |
| A．enough | B．pocket | C．extra | D．bonus |
| A．tools | B．items | C．drinks | D．snacks |
| A．doubted | B．glanced | C．shifted | D．paused |
| A．delay | B．evaluation | C．checkup | D．selection |
| A．thrilled | B．anxious | C．embarrassed | D．satisfied |
| A．blew | B．waved | C．cut | D．kicked |
| A．helpless | B．sympathetic | C．patient | D．annoyed |
| A．expensive | B．thrown-away | C．left-behind | D．major |
| A．rushed | B．slipped | C．walked | D．moved |
| A．accomplished | B．failed | C．postponed | D．started |
| A．tenderness | B．courage | C．kindness | D．tolerance |
| A．careful | B．heavy | C．clumsy | D．light |
5 . In May 1987 the Golden Gate Bridge had a 50th birthday party. The bridge was closed to motor traffic so people could enjoy a walk across it. Organizers expected perhaps 50,000 people to show up. Instead, as many as 800, 000 crowded the roads to the bridge. By the time 250,000 were on the bridge, engineers noticed something terrible：the roadway was flattening under what turned out to be the heaviest load it had ever been asked to carry. Worse, it was beginning to sway（晃动）. The authorities closed access to the bridge and tens of thousands of people made their way back to land. A disaster was avoided.
The story is one of scores in To Forgive Design：Understanding Failure, a book that is at once a love letter to engineering and a paean（赞歌）to its breakdowns. Its author, Dr. Henry Petroski, has long been writing about disasters. In this book, he includes the loss of the space shuttles（航天飞机）Challenger and Columbia, and the sinking of the Titanic.
Though he acknowledges that engineering works can fail because the person who thought them up or engineered them simply got things wrong, in this book Dr. Petroski widens his view to consider the larger context in which such failures occur. Sometimes devices fail because a good design is constructed with low quality materials incompetently applied. Or perhaps a design works so well it is adopted elsewhere again and again, with seemingly harmless improvements, until, suddenly, it does not work at all anymore.
Readers will encounter not only stories they have heard before, but some new stories and a moving discussion of the responsibility of the engineer to the public and the ways young engineers can be helped to grasp them.
"Success is success but that is all that it is," Dr. Petroski writes. It is failure that brings improvement.
1. What happened to the Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th birthday?| A．It carried more weight than it could. |
| B．It swayed violently in a strong wind |
| C．Its roadway was damaged by vehicles |
| D．Its access was blocked by many people. |
| A．No design is well received everywhere |
| B．Construction is more important than design. |
| C．Not all disasters are caused by engineering design |
| D．Improvements on engineering works are necessary. |
| A．Failure can lead to progress. | B．Success results in overconfidence |
| C．Failure should be avoided. | D．Success comes from joint efforts. |
| A．A news report | B．A short story. |
| C．A book review | D．A research article. |
6 . Online courses offer people abundant opportunities to learn. Try some of the Harvard online courses about humanities.
The Path to Happiness
From Confucianism to Daoism, the philosophies developed over two thousand years ago are among the most powerful in human history. This course brings voices from the past into modern contexts to explore the path to a good life today.
Duration: June 16, 2021—June 14, 2022
Fees: Free of charge
Pace: Self-paced
Difficulty: Introductory
Introduction to the Ancient Greek World
This course is about ancient Greece with its unique places, ways of life and historical changes. We survey the most important social institutions and cultural traditions. We also study everyday features such as food and dress.
Duration: June 21—August 6, 2021
Fees: $3400
Pace: Instructor-led
Difficulty: Introductory
Biotechnology and the Human Good
Biotechnology offers exciting and promising prospects for healing the sick and relieving the suffering. In this course we consider possible functions beyond common treatments like making people look younger, perform better and become perfect.
Duration: June 21—August 6, 2021
Fees: $ 3400
Pace: Instructor-led
Difficulty: Intermediate
Superheroes and Power
What makes superheroes popular? How can they help us think about super powers? In this course, we explore those questions in Marvel and DC favorites (especially the X-Men) as well as independent comics novels.
Duration: June 22 —August 6, 2021
Fees: $ 3400
Pace: Instructor-led
Difficulty: Intermediate
1. Which course can you take if you are free in Oct. 2021?| A．The Path to Happiness | B．Introduction to the Ancient Greek World |
| C．Biotechnology and the Human Good | D．Superheroes and Power |
| A．Powers of superheroes. | B．More uses of biotech. |
| C．Ways to increase happiness. | D．Clinical practices of biotech. |
| A．They are of the same level. | B．They are free of charge. |
| C．They belong to the same subject. | D．They are instructor-led. |
7 . Do you ever hear a friend speak on a topic with the belief that “everyone”thinks the same way? Do you often find yourself surrounded in a social media feed that is completely tailored to you and your beliefs, reading along without the immediate realization?
A social media echo chamber (回声壁) is when one experiences a tailored media experience that leave out opposing viewpoints and differing voices. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube connect groups of like-minded users together based on shared content preferences. As a result, people see and take in information according to our preexisting beliefs and opinions. Social media companies therefore rely on algorithms (算法) to assess our interests and flood us with information that will keep our attention. The algorithms focus on what we “like”, and “share” to keep feeding content that makes us comfortable.
In order to truly get access to all information and to evaluate our media, we must give ourselves the opportunity to step out of our comfort zone. While this becomes increasingly challenging, there are things we can do. The first step is to beef up your media consumption sources. Adding in a few media sources with differing opinions will allow you to at least understand what people are saying outside of your echo chamber. Next, read each thing you see with a critical eye. Make sure that each thing you accept as truth is truly fact. Lastly, attempt to search out reliable new sources that are known for trying their best to leave out false information. By accepting that our media buffet on social media is a product of our present beliefs and opinions, we can work to make sure we are not simply stuck in a social media echo chamber.
1. What is a result of the social media echo chamber?| A．People contact like-minded online users effectively. |
| B．People keep reading for more differing viewpoints. |
| C．People rely on algorithms to evaluate their interests. |
| D．People only get information confirming their beliefs. |
| A．Track. | B．Improve. |
| C．Provide. | D．Identify. |
| A．Criticizing fake news on social media. |
| B．Exposing ourselves to opposing voices. |
| C．Researching primary sources of information. |
| D．Accepting our present beliefs and opinions. |
| A．To call on people to use algorithms frequently. |
| B．To ask people not to take in information blindly. |
| C．To promote the use of various social media sites. |
| D．To inform people of new technology developments. |
8 . It’s unlikely that we’ll see a dodo, a flightless bird, walking this earth anytime again, according to Beth Shapiro, a evolutionary molecular biologist.
“When most people think about de-extinction, they’re imagining cloning,” Shapiro said. Cloning, the approach that created Dolly, the sheep in 1996 and Elizabeth Ann, the black-footed ferret in 2020, creates an identical genetic copy of an individual by putting DNA from a living adult cell into an egg cell from which the nucleus (细胞核) has been removed. Adult cells contain all the DNA needed to develop into a living animal. Egg cells then use that DNA as a blueprint to turn themselves into many kinds of cells——skin, organs, blood and bones——the animal needs.
“But no living cells from dodos exist. Instead,” Shapiro said, “you’d have to start with a closely related animal’s genome (基因组) and then change it into one similar to dodos.” For example， mammoths (猛犸) are also extinct，but they were very closely related to modern Asian elephants, so researchers are attempting to bring mammoths back from extinction by creating a hybrid mammoth with some mammoth genes replacing part of the elephant genome in an elephant egg cell. However, there are likely millions of genetic differences between the genome of an Asian elephant and that of a mammoth according to Shapiro.
As for the dodo, its closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon. Mammoths and Asian elephants are pretty closely related, whereas it had been more than 20 million years since the dodo and the Nicobar pigeon had any common ancestors. Genetic differences between the two bird species are therefore much greater, making it a formidable task to create a successful hybrid in the lab, Shapiro said.
Even if scientists manage to bring dodos back, the island where they once lived is a very different place nowadays, which make it impossible to reintroduce dodos without major intervention.
1. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．The special role of DNA. |
| B．The process of cloning. |
| C．The development of cloning. |
| D．The complexity of cloning. |
| A．Dodos are harder to bring back to life. |
| B．Their living cells are hard to preserve. |
| C．Cloning can be used to recreate extinct animals. |
| D．They share a similar genome with Asian elephants. |
| A．Urgent. |
| B．Possible. |
| C．Tough. |
| D．Different. |
| A．Favorable. |
| B．Intolerant. |
| C．Objective. |
| D．Negative. |
9 . When reading, my mother likes to slice a paragraph or a sentence out and attach it to the wall of her kitchen. She picks boring sentences that puzzle me. But I prefer copying favorite bright lines into a journal in soft, gray No. 2 pencil, word by word.
She doesn’t know any of this. There's nothing shocking: for our chatting. we seldom begin certain conversations though we talk on the phone weekly, sometimes making each other laugh so hard that I choke and she cries. But what we don't say could fill up rooms. Fights with my father. Small failures in school. Anything that really upsets us.
My mother has never told me “I love you, Lisa.”—as if the four-word absence explains who I am—so I carry it with me, like a label on me. The last time she almost spoke the words was two years ago, when she called to tell me a friend had been in hospital. I said, “I love you, Mom.” She stopped for a while and then said, “Thank you.” I haven't said it since, but I've wondered why my mother doesn't until I've found a poem that supplies words for the blank spaces I try to understand in our conversations:
Don’t fill up on bread. I say absent-mindedly. The servings here are huge.
My son, middle-aged, says: Did you really just say that to me?
What he doesn’t know is that when we’re walking together, I desire to reach for his hand.
It's humble, yet heartbreaking. After copying it down in my journal, I emailed it to mom, adding “This poem makes me think of you.” My mother doesn’t read poetry—or at least, she doesn’t tell me, and I felt nervous clicking “Send”.
She never mentioned the poem. But the next time I went home for vacation, I noticed something new in the kitchen fixed to an antique board: the poem. The board hung above the heater, the warmest spot in the kitchen. The poem still hangs there. Neither my mother nor I have ever spoken about it.
1. What's the function of paragraph 1?| A．To stress the theme. | B．To establish the setting. |
| C．To represent the characters. | D．To create the atmosphere. |
| A．Shaky. | B．Distant. | C．Reserved. | D．Intense. |
| A．It reminded her of mom's love. |
| B．She wanted to apologize to mom. |
| C．It suited mom's taste of literature. |
| D．She needed an interpretation from mom. |
| A．A memory of golden days. |
| B．Daughter’s gratefulness to her. |
| C．A decoration in the plain kitchen. |
| D．Daughter's understanding of her. |
10 . In the days before the Internet, critical thinking was the most important skill of informed citizens. But in the digital age, according to Anastasia Kozyreva, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, and her colleagues, an even more important skill is critical ignoring.
As the researchers point out, we live in an attention economy where content producers on the Internet compete for our attention. They attract us with a lot of emotional and eye-catching stories while providing little useful information, so they can expose us to profit-generating advertisements. Therefore,we are no longer customers but products, and each link we click is a sale of our time and attention. Toprotect ourselves from this, Kozyreva advocates for learning the skill of critical ignoring, in which readers intentionally control their information environment to reduce exposure to false and low-quality information.
According to Kozyreva, critical ignoring comprises three strategies. The first is to design ourenvironments, which involves the removal of low-quality yet hard-to-resist information from around. Successful dieters need to keep unhealthy food out of their homes. Likewise, we need to set up a digital environment where attention-grabbing items are kept out of sight. As with dieting, if one tries to bank onwillpower not to click eye-catching “news”, he’ll surely fail. So, it’s better to just keep them out of sightto begin with.
The next is to evaluate the reliability of information, whose purpose is to protect you from false and misleading information. It can be realized by checking the source in the mainstream news agencies which have their reputations for being trustworthy.
The last goes by the phrase “do not feed the trolls.” Trolls are actors who internationally spread false and hurtful information online to cause harm. It may be appealing to respond to them to set the facts straight, but trolls just care about annoying others rather than facts. So, it’s best not to reward their bad behaviour with our attention.
By sharpening our critical ignoring skills in these ways, we can make the most of the Internet while avoiding falling victim to those who try to control our attention, time, and minds.
1. What can we learn about the attention economy from paragraph 2?| A．It offers little information. | B．It features depressing stories. |
| C．It saves time for Internet users. | D．It seeks profits from each click. |
| A．To discuss the quality of information |
| B．To prove the benefits of healthy food. |
| C．To show the importance of environments. |
| D．To explain the effectiveness of willpower. |
| A．Reveal their intention. | B．Turn a deaf ear to them. |
| C．Correct their behaviour. | D．Send hard facts to them. |
| A．Reasons for critical thinking in the attention economy. |
| B．Practising the skill of critical ignoring in the digital age. |
| C．Maximizing the benefits of critical ignoring on the Internet. |
| D．Strategies of abandoning critical thinking for Internet users |
