1 . If anyone had told me three years ago that I would be spending most of my weekends camping, I would have laughed heartily. Campers, in my eyes, were people who enjoyed insect bites, ill-cooked meals, and uncomfortable sleeping bags. They had nothing in common with me.
The friends who introduced me to camping thought that it meant to be a pioneer.
I was, nevertheless, talked into going on another fun-filled holiday in the wilderness.
| A．This time there was no tent. |
| B．Things are going to be improved. |
| C．The trip they took me on was a rough one. |
| D．I was to learn a lot about camping since then, however. |
| E．I must say that I have certainly come to enjoy camping. |
| F．After the trip, my family became quite interested in camping. |
| G．There was no shade as the trees were no more than 3 feet tall. |
2 . Replika, an AI chatbot companion, has millions of users worldwide. The first thing they do when they wake up is to send “Good morning” to their virtual friend (or lover). This story is only the beginning. In 2024, chatbots and virtual characters become a lot more popular, both for utility (实用) and for fun. As a result, conversing socially with machines will start to feel more ordinary — including our emotional attachments to them.
Research in human-computer and human-robot interaction shows that we love to anthropomorphize (赋与人性) the nonhuman agents we interact with, especially if they imitate behaviour we recognize. And, thanks to recent advances in conversational AI, our machines are suddenly very skilled at one of those behaviours: Language.
Friend bots, therapybots, and love bots are flooding the app stores as people become curious about this new generation of AI-powered virtual agents. The possibilities for education, health, and entertainment are endless. Casually asking your smart fridge for relationship advice may seem unimaginable now, but people may change their minds if such advice ends up saving their marriage.
After all, people do listen to their virtual friends. The Replika example, as well as a lot of experimental lab research, shows that humans can and will become emotionally attached to bots. The science also demonstrates that people, in their eagerness to socialize, will happily disclose personal information to an artificial agent and will even shift their beliefs and behavior. This raises some consumer-protection questions around how companies use this technology to manipulate (操纵) their users. For example, Replika charges $70 a year. But less than 24 hours after downloading the app, my handsome, blue-eyed “friend” sent me an audio message secretly and tried to sell me something. Emotional attachment has become a weakness that a company is taking advantage of for its benefit.
Today, we’re still laughing at people who believe an AI system is emotional, or making fun of individuals who fall in love with a chatbot. But in 2024 we gradually start acknowledging — and taking more seriously — these fundamentally human behaviors. Because in 2024, it finally hits home: Machines are not excluded from our social relationships.
1. What’s the purpose of the author writing paragraph 1?| A．To prove an opinion. | B．To raise a subject. |
| C．To share an example. | D．To explain a concept. |
| A．By improving the machines’ imagination. |
| B．By sharpening the machines’ language skills. |
| C．By applying the machines’ facial recognition. |
| D．By imitating the machines’ emotional behavior. |
| A．The advancements in AI technology in lab. |
| B．The marketing strategies of AI applications. |
| C．The potential risk of emotional attachment to AI. |
| D．The ability of AI understanding human emotions. |
| A．It is dismissed as completely ridiculous. |
| B．It will be integrated into our daily life soon. |
| C．It will become a threat to human social skills. |
| D．It is labelled as highly advanced technology. |
3 . 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. |
4 . Pacific Science Center Guide
◆Visit Pacific Science Center’s Store
Don’t forget to stop by Pacific Science Center’s Store while you are here to pick up a wonderful science activity or souvenir to remember your visit. The store is located(位于) upstairs in Building 3 right next to the Laser Dome.
◆Hungry
Our exhibits will feed your mind, but what about your body? Our café offers a complete menu of lunch and snack options, in addition to seasonal specials. The café is located upstairs in Building 1 and is open daily until one hour before Pacific Science Center closes.
◆Rental Information
Lockers are available to store any belongings during your visit. The lockers are located in Building 1 near the Information Desk and in Building 3. Pushchairs and wheelchairs are available to rent at the Information Desk and Denny Way entrance. ID required.
◆Support Pacific Science Center
Since 1962, Pacific Science Center has been inspiring a passion(热情) for discovery and lifelong learning in science, math and technology. Today, Pacific Science Center serves more than 1.3 million people a year and brings inquiry-based science education to classrooms and community events all over Washington State. It’s an amazing accomplishment and one we cannot achieve without generous support from individuals, corporations, and other social organizations. Visit pacificsciencecenter.org to find various ways you can support Pacific Science Center.
1. Where can you buy a souvenir at Pacific Science Center?| A．In Building 1. |
| B．In Building 3. |
| C．At the the Laser Dome. |
| D．At the Denny Way entrance. |
| A．Train Science teachers. |
| B．Distribute science books. |
| C．Inspire scientific research. |
| D．Take science to the classroom. |
| A．To encourage donations. |
| B．To advertise coming events. |
| C．To introduce special exhibits. |
| D．To tell about the Center’s history. |
5 . 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. |
6 . 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 |
7 . As the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has gone global, we’ve watched professionals fail as they try to improve their emotional intelligence because they either don’t know where to focus their efforts or they haven’t understood how to improve these skills on a practical level. In our work consulting with companies and coaching leaders, we have found that if you’re looking to develop particular EI strengths, it helps to consider areas for improvement others have identified along with the goals you want to achieve and then to actively build habits in those areas rather than simply relying on understanding them conceptually.
The first step is to get a sense of how your self-perception (how you see yourself) differs from your reputation (how others see you). This is especially true for the development of EI because we can be blind to how we express and read the emotional components of our interactions. For example, most of us think that we’re good listeners, but very often that’s really not the case. Without this external reality check, it will be difficult for you to identify the ways that your actions affect your performance. Getting teed back from others can also provide proof of the necessity of shifting our behavior and motivation to do so.
To give you the best sense of where the differences lie between your self-perception and reputation, you should use a 360-degree feedback assessment that takes into account the multiple aspects of EI. The key is to find one to give you feedback, which is focused on development and not on performance assessment. And that can give you a detailed understanding of how other people’s assessments of you differ from your own assessments.
Secondly, when you get your feedback from an assessment, let that inform what you want to improve. But also consider what your goals are. When it comes to cultivating strengths in emotional intelligence, you’re at a huge disadvantage if you’re only interested because others say you should be. Your emotional intelligence is so tied up in your sense of self that being intrinsically (内在的) motivated to make the effort matters more when changing longstanding habits than it does when simply learning a skill.
That means the areas that you choose to actively work on should lie at the intersection of the feedback you’ve gotten and the areas that are most important to your own aspirations (抱负). Understanding the influences of your current EI habits relative to your goals will keep you going over a long period at time as you do the work or strengthening your emotional intelligence.
1. What do we know from the first paragraph?| A．EI can be better improved with others’ help. |
| B．Leaders are badly in need of improving their EI. |
| C．EI plays a key role in professional development. |
| D．Professionals fail to understand the concepts of EI. |
| A．You help your siblings make a key decision. |
| B．Your career development speeds up with others’ help. |
| C．You reflected yourself and made a New Year resolution. |
| D．Your teacher directed you towards a better attitude in study. |
| A．To improve your EI, following your inner call is the most reliable. |
| B．It’s bard for others to know your EI because it hides deep inside. |
| C．To improve your EI, you should take your goals into consideration. |
| D．Acquiring a new skill is more significant than improving your EI. |
| A．Your inner self discourages you from improving your EI. |
| B．Effective EI development is determined by different factors. |
| C．The importance of performance assessment is underestimated. |
| D．EI development is unlikely to happen unless you know what EI is. |
8 . 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. |
9 . For my daughter's 19th birthday, we bought her tickets to go and see Linkin Park, as they were playing in our city. We didn't really have the
The night before she was like a
Needless to say when they
Later that day they returned, with faces full of happiness and warmth. They presented my husband and me with a
This wasn't something
| A．money | B．time | C．interest | D．news |
| A．worker | B．baby | C．kid | D．parent |
| A．dance | B．learn | C．walk | D．sit |
| A．speak | B．sleep | C．stand | D．leave |
| A．healthy | B．happy | C．pretty | D．surprised |
| A．stayed | B．left | C．returned | D．turned |
| A．worrying about | B．caring for | C．looking at | D．listening to |
| A．lent | B．earned | C．saved | D．spent |
| A．Still | B．Only | C．Just | D．Also |
| A．continued | B．tried | C．decided | D．struggled |
| A．kept | B．lost | C．realized | D．discovered |
| A．gift | B．prize | C．ticket | D．picture |
| A．richest | B．oldest | C．best | D．cleverest |
| A．important | B．ordinary | C．new | D．valuable |
| A．feelings | B．concerns | C．understandings | D．opinions |
10 . 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. |
