1 . Ice Cold Coca-Cola Instant Win Game
If you are eager for a trip to Hawaii but short of money, then come to this game, which is right for you. The prize is a 6-night Hawaiian getaway for 4 from Coca-Cola, including a day trip to the Volcanoes National Park where an active volcano and more are waiting for you to explore.
A product code from a Coca-Cola l2 pack should be submitted to enter. You can submit up to 3 codes per day to increase your chances of winning. The game begins on November 1,2023,and ends on January 31,2024.
The Ice Cold Coca-Cola Instant Win Game, which is administrated by the Hello World, Inc, is now sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company.13-year or older children who are legal residents of the U.S. have the right qualifications to enter for it. Employees of the Coca-Cola company and any agencies involved in the development of the game will not be able to enter or win any prize in this game.
Grand prizes:
·A trip for four to Hilo, Hawaii
·6 nights’ accommodations at the sponsor's choice of hotel
·A $800 allowance for rental cars
·$3,000 that may be used for spending toward taxes and travel agent services.
·A round trip and economy class air transportation for 4 from a major airport near the winner's home
Extra considerations:
·The winner and his or her guests must travel on the same route.
·The winner must complete the trip within one year, otherwise the prize will be cancelled.
·The winner must book a trip at least a fortnight before departure. And it must be a round trip.
1. What is special about the game?
| A．It is aimed to help people save money. |
| B．It is developed by the Coca-Cola Company. |
| C．It requires applicants to submit more than 3 codes per day. |
| D．Its sponsor offers many attractive prizes for the winner. |
| A．The teenagers with American legal residence. |
| B．American children in love with Coca-Cola. |
| C．The employees of the Coca-Cola company. |
| D．The children of the game administrators. |
| A．A trip for four to Hilo, Hawaii in different routes. |
| B．An one way trip to Hilo and 6 nights' free accommodations. |
| C．Free round-trip flights for 4 to Hilo and additional $3,800 travel cost. |
| D．An expensive car and free economy class air transportation for 4 to Hilo. |
2 . I was halfway across Indiana headed home to Kentucky when my car broke down. My phone was
I sat alongside my car for several hours trying to
Right then and there, this total
| A．busy | B．loud | C．dead | D．secure |
| A．mechanic | B．policeman | C．manager | D．guide |
| A．washing | B．parking | C．purchasing | D．maintaining |
| A．feel | B．beat | C．absorb | D．produce |
| A．promised | B．refused | C．stopped | D．volunteered |
| A．solved | B．noticed | C．escaped | D．explained |
| A．surprise | B．regret | C．amusement | D．disappointment |
| A．called up | B．pulled out | C．put down | D．threw away |
| A．liar | B．beginner | C．stranger | D．loser |
| A．free | B．ready | C．uncertain | D．unable |
| A．pronounced | B．agreed | C．discovered | D．doubted |
| A．Tiredness | B．Kindness | C．Loneliness | D．Carefulness |
| A．Folding | B．Drying | C．Soiling | D．Mending |
| A．saved | B．called | C．judged | D．banned |
| A．friend | B．daughter | C．coworker | D．customer |
3 . It was freezing winter when Dad told me that he found a delicate small bag in the snow on his way out of a doctor’s appointment. “It was filled with seeds, so I planted them in pots in the living room window that gets such great light.” Dad was excited to have a planting project in the winter. He liked tending his garden plot , which was the size of a small farm.
I now lived far away from Dad, but he reported in his daily phone calls, “These plants seem to double in size overnight. It’s only been a few weeks, and they are almost touching the ceiling.” Since Dad had green fingers, I wasn’t surprised about that. I couldn’t imagine what plant would do so well. I knew photos would not come soon because Dad had to use up the film in his camera and then developed the pictures.
During one call, Dad said, “Today at work, one of my co-workers was wearing a T-shirt with a screen-printed picture of the same leaf as my mysterious houseplants. I told him that I had those same herbs, which were growing like weeds, and I had to get rid of them.” Dad continued, “He eagerly took them off my hands, and now I can see out the window again.”
This awakened my curiosity, and I decided to do some research. In those days, that meant going to the library’s reference section. I did some reading and photocopied some articles. I mailed them to my father.
Dad called, “I just couldn’t believe what I read in the papers you sent. Those pictures are exactly what my plants looked like. No wonder my co-worker was so willing to take them.”
We both laughed till we cried when we realized my father had just raised a harvest of precious Chinese herbs used to ease pain.
| A．Because it was the doctor’s advice. |
| B．Because he had a small farm at home. |
| C．Because it satisfied his eagerness for gardening in winter. |
| D．Because the seeds would bring him rich rewards. |
| A．The type of the plant. | B．The herbs’ growing quickly. |
| C．Dad’s efforts to tend the seeds. | D．A planting project in the winter. |
| A．He had little interest in the plants. | B．He recognized the value of the plants. |
| C．He desired to learn from the author’s dad. | D．He wanted to show his knowledge about plants. |
| A．A precious Chinese herb | B．Window scenery |
| C．Helpful co-worker | D．An Innocent gardener |
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．question | B．barrier | C．difficulty | D．conflict |
| A．fetch | B．slice | C．weigh | D．taste |
| A．adequate | 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．dashed | B．slipped | C．walked | D．moved |
| A．accomplished | B．failed | C．postpone | D．started |
| A．tenderness | B．courage | C．kindness | D．tolerance |
| A．fast | B．heavy | C．clumsy | D．light |
5 . 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 |
6 . David hoped to be a teacher when he was young. “The minute I walked into my university, I knew
As an education major, he was excited to learn his classroom
David quickly adapted himself to the university. He was
By the end of the second year of his university, David had
Two months before graduation, David was
| A．regularly | B．exactly | C．widely | D．randomly |
| A．clever | B．proud | C．warm | D．mean |
| A．playing | B．building | C．disciplines | D．experiences |
| A．run | B．wait | C．study | D．respond |
| A．bored | B．frightened | C．attracted | D．confused |
| A．voted | B．allowed | C．sent | D．left |
| A．libraries | B．tasks | C．jobs | D．posters |
| A．failures | B．performances | C．requests | D．activities |
| A．skills | B．tips | C．right | D．body |
| A．return | B．bring | C．throw | D．award |
| A．chosen | B．forgotten | C．refused | D．completed |
| A．disorders | B．preferences | C．abilities | D．habits |
| A．easy | B．expensive | C．additional | D．strange |
| A．passed | B．offered | C．showed | D．served |
| A．paid off | B．went wrong | C．fell apart | D．broke down |
7 . More than 50 percent of the largest lakes in the world are losing water, storing less water than they did three decades ago, according to a new assessment published today in Science. The key causes are not surprising: The warming climate and unsustainable human consumption.
Lead author Fangfang Yao, a climate fellow at University of Virginia, and his team created a technique to measure changes in water levels of nearly 2,000 of the world’s biggest lakes and reservoirs (水库), which represent 95 percent of the total lake water storage on Earth.
They used 250,000 lake-area pictures taken by satellites between 1992 and 2020 to survey the area of 1,972 of Earth’s biggest lakes. They collected water levels from nine satellite altimeters (测高计) and used long-term water levels to reduce any uncertainty. For lakes without a long-term level record, they used recent water measurements made by newer instruments on satellites. Combining recent level measurements with longer-term area measurements allowed scientists to reconstruct the volume of lakes dating back decades.
The result was staggering: 53 percent of lakes globally experienced a decline in water storage. The authors compare this loss with the size of 17 Lake Meads, the largest reservoir in the United States.
To explain the trends in natural lakes, the team used recent advancements in water use and climate modeling. “Climate change and human water consumption were mainly responsible for the global net decline in natural lake volume and water losses in about 100 large lakes,” Yao said. “And many of the human and climate change footprints on lake water losses were previously unknown, such as the dryness of Lake Good-e-Zareh in Afghanistan.”
And their research offers an understanding into possible solutions. Yao said, “If human consumption is a large cause of lake water storage decline, then we can adapt and explore new policies to reduce large-scale (大范围) declines.” This happened in one of the lakes the team studied, Lake Sevan in Armenia. Lake Sevan has seen an increase in water storage, in the last 20 years, which the authors linked to the enforcement (实施) of conservation laws on water withdrawal since the early 2000s.
1. What phenomenon does the author describe at the beginning of the text?| A．Many largest lakes are in decline. | B．Sustainable development is important. |
| C．Global warming is worsening quickly. | D．The water storage system needs improving. |
| A．The reason for reducing the uncertainty. | B．The process of looking for lakes. |
| C．The measures used to do the research. | D．The ways to reconstruct the lakes. |
| A．Understandable. | B．Exciting. | C．Useful. | D．Shocking. |
| A．The increase in human consumption has slowed. |
| B．Some laws are needed to increase lake water storage. |
| C．Lakes have seen significant growth in water increase. |
| D．Water resources management is unknown to the public. |
8 . Researchers have trained a robot “chef” to watch and learn from cooking videos, and recreate the dish itself.
Grzegorz Sochacki, a PhD in Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory, and his colleagues designed eight simple salad recipes and filmed themselves making them. They then used a publicly available neural network (神经元网络) to train their robot chef. The neural network had already been programmed to identify a range of different objects, including the fruits and vegetables used in the eight salad recipes.
Using computer vision techniques, the robot analyzed each frame (画面) of videos and was able to identify the different objects and features, such as a knife and the ingredients (佐料), as well as the human demonstrator’s arms, hands and face. Both the recipes and the videos were changed to vectors (模型) and the robot performed mathematical operations on the vectors to determine the similarity between a demonstration and a vector. By correctly identifying the ingredients and the actions of the human chef, the robot could determine which of the recipes was being prepared. The robot could infer that if the human chef was holding a knife in one hand and a carrot in the other, the carrot would then get cut up.
Of the 16 videos it watched, the robot recognized the correct recipes 93% of the time. The robot was also able to detect that slight changes in a recipe, such as making a double portion (份) or normal human errors, were changes and didn’t mean a new recipe. The robot also correctly recognized the demonstration of a new, ninth salad, added it to its cookbook and made it.
“Our robot isn’t interested in the sorts of food videos that are popular online, which quickly move back and forth between the person preparing the food and the dish they’re preparing—they’re simply too hard to follow,” said Sochacki. “But as these robot chefs get better and faster, they will be able to use those videos to learn a whole range of recipes.”
1. What did Sochacki and his colleagues do for the experiment?| A．They posted a film featuring network online. |
| B．They made videos to train their robot chef. |
| C．They designed a neural network themselves. |
| D．They prepared 16 salad recipes for the robot. |
| A．The learning process of the robot chef is very easy. |
| B．It is difficult to tell ingredients from human chefs’ faces. |
| C．The robot chef can predict what will happen next accordingly. |
| D．Few mathematical operations are needed for the identification. |
| A．Positive. | B．Unclear. | C．Doubtful. | D．Worried. |
| A．The Similarity Between a Demonstration and a Vector Is Proved |
| B．A Publicly Available Neural Network Makes Cooking Easier |
| C．Online Videos Help Robot Chefs Learn a Whole Range of Recipes |
| D．A Robot Chef Learns to Recreate Recipes from Watching Food Videos |
9 . On April 10, the University of Utah became officially Bee Campus certificated. This process was started by senior Zoē Bross in her second year on campus. Bee Campus USA hopes to protect the native pollinators (传粉者) on college campuses by increasing the number of native plants, providing nest sites, reducing the use of pesticides, and offering educational opportunities that help with pollinator conservation.
After first hearing her school wasn’t certificated a Bee Campus and finding becoming Bee Campus certificated would give the University more point s on the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) program, which decides ratings to campuses according to their sustainable efforts, Bross wanted to help.
There are many requirements to become Bee Campus certificated. The first major step for Bross was to create a standing Bee Campus committee with a mix of students and staff. Bross tried to reach out to professors and people specializing in this field. After many efforts, the program was finally passed through and a garden for it was created.
Over 100 people showed up to help plant in the garden. After the planting was done, Grounds, responsible for planting the pollinator gardens, set up their hydroseeder (水力播种机) and let attendees take turns spraying the hill, with a mixture of water and wildflower seeds, making the area more pollinator-friendly. Rocky, the school robot, even made an appearance, taking turns spraying.
Certificated by Bee Campus USA, Bee Campuses are expected to continue maintaining or improving pollinator habitats on campuses, as well as maintaining an educational online presence. “I see the campus continuing to be very interested,” Bross stated.
Future plans for the campus include more pollinator gardens, native wildflowers, and even bee sculptures to provide new habitats. As for Bross? She pictures herself somewhere warm and sunny in the near future, working in environmental communications and doing something for the change she wants to see in the world.
1. What is the purpose of Bee Campus USA?| A．To offer some advice on sustainable development. |
| B．To find educational opportunities to rate the college. |
| C．To protect native pollinators on college campuses. |
| D．To increase the number of college campuses. |
| A．Form a committee. | B．Buy a hydroseeder. |
| C．Create a garden. | D．Join a student organization. |
| A．To scare the pollinators away. | B．To help spray the hill. |
| C．To plant wildflower seeds. | D．To welcome people. |
| A．She is fond of drawing. | B．She will look for some new habitats. |
| C．She owns pollinator gardens. | D．She has an environment-related work plan. |
10 . A school Picture Day usually occurs either once in the fall, or twice a year during both the start of the fall and spring terms. A school Picture Day is you and your children’s chance to record and keep memories for the school year. Missing a Picture Day means missing out on joy and special moments of the childhood—so it’s important to plan ahead.
Hairstyle
Don’t get a new haircut right before the Picture Day. If you’re planning your children’s haircut for the Picture Day, make sure it gets done at least two weeks before the Picture Day. This will ensure that any bad spots have time to grow back before the photos.
Try to stick to a neutral haircut. Recent trending hairstyles, colors and other unique hairstyles may not go well. You should find a hairstyle that is both neutral and something that represents your children’s personality.
Keep the hair out of their face. If your children’s hair naturally falls in front of their face, try to use hairpins, hair spray, or even a fresh haircut to keep their bright smile shining through.
Clothing
Dress for the weather. If it’s cold outside, you should make sure your children arrive at school in clothing that keeps them warm. On the contrary, if the Picture Day is scheduled on a forecast heatwave, dressing your children in warmer clothing (even if it’s your favorite one) could result in sweat showing up in the photos.
Don’t make your children wear anything they don’t like. They’ll shine in clothing they’re comfortable in, but will look obviously less comfortable in one they don’t like. Help your children show their best side by letting them wear clothes they love.
Accessories (配饰)
Keep jewelry minimal. You never want children’s jewelry to distract from their photos. If they do want to wear some sort of jewelry, make sure that it’s small or understated.
Avoid hats. Hats do little help, other than covering up your children’s head and face and should never be included.
1. Who is the text intended for?| A．Parents. | B．Students. | C．Teachers. | D．Photographers. |
| A．It should be newly cut. | B．It should be colored in a recent trend. |
| C．It should cover the smile. | D．It should show children’s uniqueness. |
| A．choose warm clothes | B．avoid much jewelry |
| C．follow adults | D．wear a small hat |
